Allegiant: The End
by alyssss
Summary: An alternative ending to the series, so spoilers (obviously). Caleb refuses to allow Tris to take over his mission, and the story goes from there.
1. Chapter 1

"I can't let you go, Caleb." My hand rests on his arm, my eyes finding his across the miles between our hearts. "Please." The fabric of the bag is stiff and cold under my fingers as they wrap around the strap, lifting it off his shoulder to swing it over mine. "Let me go instead. Tell Tobias I love him."

Caleb shakes his head and lets his eyes close against my pleading stare as he tugs the bag from my grip. "No, Tris. I've hurt you. I've done nothing but betray you since the choosing ceremony and I'm going to right all those wrongs. Mom and Dad gave their lives to protect _you_, and I'm not going to run off and let you throw that away just because you want to be the hero one last time."

I choke back a sob as my throat tightens, my hand still gripping the backpack full of explosives even as he pulls it back onto his shoulders. He can't do this.

"Please, Beatrice."

His eyes are wide and begging. Deep inside, I know he wants me to take the backpack and do this for him, to make the ultimate sacrifice and save him from death… But my mind shifts and I know I can't do it. I can't leave them- Christina and Tobias, after everything we've done and everything we've been through. I can't survive the death serum any more than Caleb, and it's him that's had all the training.

A line of guns faces us at one end of the corridor, a group of guards shifting their sights between each of us as we make our exchanges. I finger the gun at my waist, memories of Will's death forgotten as I withdraw it and hold it in my hand, the cool metal of the grip pressing into my palm.

My eyes hold Caleb's for the longest time, unblinking and taking in every inch of him as he wraps an arm around my shoulders and pulls me into him. "I'm sorry, Beatrice." His voice tickles my ear as he whispers his final words to me, his spare hand moving to his belt and withdrawing a short blade. He can't even bear to look me in the eye as he thrusts his arm forwards, driving the metal into my side.

Blood blossoms over my shirt as the pain sears through my body and I drop to my knees, my head light and heavy all at the same time. This wasn't part of the plan. Caleb…?

His face is pale and withdrawn as he glances at me, curled on the floor. A minute of hesitation is all it takes before the guards begin to fire, and he takes off down the white corridor and around the corner, heading to the weapons room as he gathers the overalls in his arms.

The sound of heavy pounding footsteps against white tile fills my ears, a low murmuring as one of the guards kneels beside my foggy head and puts his hand on my wrists. A sigh escapes his throat as he pulls my hands behind my back and fastens them with a plastic tie, a scream hissing through my teeth as the knife shifts in my flesh. A drop of blood slips down the hilt of the dagger and drips onto the floor, spreading out over the tile like a liquid red rose.

My vision blackens at the edges and I squeeze my eyes shut against the world, focussing on his hands against my back instead of the burning in my side, the heaviness of my head. His hands slip around my back and lift me up, his muscly arms cradling me as my body explodes in a starburst of pain.

The pain subsides, the blackness brightening to reveal a small white chamber. A cell.

I blink away the debris of sleep and wait for the fogginess of the drugs to subside before I tilt my spinning head, squinting at the door. White and set into the tiled wall, a re-enforced steel sheet with a single glass panel set in the top centre.

A pair of eyes watch me from beyond the glass, blue as the sculpture on his desk back in his father's house. Tobias.

My lips strain to form his name, but the creases on his face show only pity and disappointment. How could he still love me, after all I have done? How I betrayed him... I take a deep breath as I close my eyes against his glare, turning my head away from the door to face the opposite wall as a tear slips across my cheek. Be brave, Tris.

My shoulders shudder as a sob rattles my chest, and I force myself to breathe against the burning pain in my side- and the dull ache that's settled itself in my heart. The agony in his sapphire blue eyes is etched into my memory, is there in the crescent-moon marks on my palms from my clenched fists.

By the time the tears have melted away, Tobias has gone. My fingers sting as I rub the salty tracks from my face, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed and pushing myself upright, wide awake once more. As I stand, my head pounds with dehydration and fatigue, sleep threatening to take over as I stumble to the narrow desk pushed against the wall. The wood is smooth against my fingers as I slide into the chair, gripping the edge of the table until the room stops spinning around me.

The water is cold and refreshing in the back of my throat, and I press the icy glass against my forehead as a bead of condensation dribbles down the side of the jug and pools on the desk. What happened to Caleb? Did he manage to deploy the serum? My eyes move from the jug and lazily scan the room. No, he didn't succeed. If he had, I would surely have been released…

The door to my cell swings open and Christina steps into the room, a hulking black gun strapped to her back. She wears tight black combats and tough boots, and a stern expression on her brown face. Her eyes soften as they find me, her straight mouth crumpling as she abandons her duty, running forward and burying my face in her shoulder as her arms wrap themselves around my neck. A sob escapes her lips as she caresses my hair, her smile pressed against my cheek.

"You're alive." She gasps, pulling away but keeping hold of my shoulders with her fingers like I might just disappear. "You didn't…" Her face darkens as she remembers her duty, pulling a set of handcuffs from a pocket in her combats and fastening them around my wrists. "I'm sorry about Caleb." A whisper now, as she pushes herself off the concrete floor and helps me to my feet. "It's time for your trial- the dauntless way."

She marches me in silence down snaking white corridors with concrete floors. My battered shoes tread softly along the cold ground, the air prickling through my thermal shirt and grey joggers as the rattle of Christina's gun sends shivers up my spine. The lift is silent as we travel ascend from the prison, emerging in the atrium of the compound. I expect us to head towards the dining hall or another public space, but instead I'm guided around the fountain and down the corridor, past rubble and brick dust and into our dorm.

Tobias sits on one bed, Cara on the other. They stand as we enter, Cara glaring at me with burning eyes while Tobias glances up at me, his arms wrapped around his chest. My heart aches as I think about embracing him in my arms, holding his face with my hands and pressing my lips to his mouth- but everything has changed. I am a criminal, a traitor.

Christina pulls a chair from against the wall and puts it in the middle of the floor, and a groan of pain growls from my throat as I sit down, ready to face my judgement. Tobias' eyes flicker with pity and longing, but then move away to focus on the carpet beneath his feet. He takes a deep breath and rolls his shoulders before he looks up, his eyes hardened as he trains them on me. The traitor.

My neck tingles as Cara rubs an antiseptic wipe over my skin, pushing a needle under my flesh and injecting a pale blue liquid. They stand and wait while the truth serum pulses through my veins. They know I can resist the effects- that I can choose to tell half-truths or avoid the question- but their eyes convey only trust, and I know I cannot lie to them again.

"Beatrice Prior. You are being held on suspicion of treasonous offenses against your pledged allegiances, culminating in the extensive loss of life and information throughout the city. You are required to speak only when an answer is required, and must respond with only the truth." Cara folds her arms in front of her chest, and steps in front of Christina and Tobias as I let my eyes drift upwards. Her face is stern, painful lines surrounding her eyes. "You were required to accompany Caleb throughout the compound, and assist in enabling him to reach the weapons lab. What happened after we left?"

I don't fight the words as they tumble from my tingling lips, bouncing off my tongue and rolling into the still and silent air. "We rehearsed the procedure. Matthew went over the codes and the method for releasing the memory serum, and we put together our kits and set off through the compound."

"What went wrong?" Christina butts in, earning a fiery glare from Cara. The serum answers for me, the words pouring from my mind even before Christina finishes speaking.

"Matthew had to head back to see to some technical issues." I begin, my voice trembling as images of our painful goodbyes rush through my mind. "I tried to take the backpack from Caleb, but he wouldn't let me take over the mission. He… he took his knife from his belt and stabbed me- that wasn't part of the plan- then he ran off down the corridor and the guards started shooting at him… and that's all I know." Cara sighs, running her fingers through her hair and sinking onto the bed.

"Did you see what happened to him? To Caleb?" I shake my head and she bites her lip. She knows the time is running out, that the serum will wear off soon- but I can see in her eyes that she doesn't have any more questions to ask me. "She's innocent, Tobias. It's not her fault."

His eyes flash with rage, but he shakes his head quickly and turns to Christina. They whisper together, and the pain in Christina's eyes burns bright as she watches me from over his shoulder. Finally, Tobias turns back towards me and nods at Cara, who steps forwards and unlocks the handcuffs, helping me to stand and letting me sit on the edge of my old bed. Tobias sits on the edge of the bed opposite, Cara and Christina flanking him on either side. I realise now- I am the enemy.

"Caleb failed, Tris." Christina speaks now, but the silence behind her voice is there. Nobody else has anything to say to me. "He got to just around the corner from the weapons lab before one of the guards managed to shoot him."

I can feel the serum wearing off now; the coolness of the chemicals departing my system as reality comes flooding back. "What happened to him?"

Tobias looks at me for the first time in minutes, his usually warm eyes cold with loss. "He's dead, Tris." The words hit me like a bus, the air rushing out of my lungs in a painful sigh. From the moment this plan was hatched, I knew he was going to die. When he let me go in that corridor, I knew that was the last moment I would see him… but I always hoped…

Tobias must see the empty pain in my eyes, but he doesn't elaborate. "They managed to shoot him in the head." Cara adds, her hands clenched between her knees. "He died instantly." It's some comfort to know that my brother did not suffer, but I can't breathe. I'm alone- the final Prior… What's the point?

"And everyone else? If he died, that means…"

"They let it off. We couldn't stop them. The serum spread- not only over the compound but over the whole city."

"So…"

"We're the only ones that remember." Christina chokes, her eyes falling from my face and finding a spot on the floor. "Peter didn't inject himself with the anti-serum, so he's with them. In the city, I mean…"

But she's avoiding the subject. Like me, Christina has lost her family. Cara too, and Tobias. The four of us have never been so alone. The pain hits me like an axe, the realisation of how much _everything_ has changed. My eyes burn as I push myself up and stumble to Christina, wrapping my arms around her and pulling her head into my shoulder, like she did to me not an hour before. Somehow, it's worse for them. My family is dead and gone- but their family is still alive… and will never remember them.

Tobias's eyes flicker up to mine and I stare back, trying to lessen the void between us by showing him that I understand. He holds my gaze while Christina lets out a sob against my chest, then reaches up with his hand. His skin is cold as he pulls me away from Christina, rubbing her back as he rests his hand on my shoulder and guides me from the room.

We duck together into the lounge next to the dormitory, the room with the sofa and the sheet where we shared our most intimate moment. My cheeks burn as I remember, and his quickly shifting eyes convey the same- but the gap between us is too big. The ache in my arms is unbearable as I fight the urge to pull him towards me and hold him tight, to let my lips collide against his in a kiss that I never thought I would experience again. It surprises me when he speaks, drawing me out of my imagination and waking me up, bringing me back to reality once more as his voice penetrates the walls of my mind.

"What now?" His voice is unsure, his speech weaker than I've ever heard. He trembles as he digs his hands into his pockets, looking up at me through half-closed eyes. "What happens next?"

I cough, and pain ripples up my side. A tiny yelp escapes me and he jumps forwards in alarm, and I hold my side gingerly as I look into his eyes. He steps up to me and presses his hands over mine, his eyes full of sympathy that I wish he didn't express. "What do you mean?"

"I don't know if I can trust you."

His hands fall away from my side as I turn to face the door, my eyes dampening under the strain of everything. "You know how I feel about you, Four." He flinches and wanders to the sofa, dropping down onto the crinkled white sheet. "You've lost them, I understand. If you want to lose me too, if you want to start all over again, to forget me and leave me behind… you can. I want you to be happy, and if clinging to your past makes you miserable… that's no way to live."

He sighs, leaning back into the sofa and turning his head to look at me. "Beatrice. I… I love you. I can't imagine what my life would be like without you. I've lost everyone- I can't bear to lose you too."

I turn to face him now, one hand still pressed against my side. The thick bandage underneath my shirt is warm to the touch, but the skin underneath pulls with a sharp ache with every breath. Letters tickle my tongue, but my lips refuse to craft them into words I can use. Instead, I step forwards and slide onto the sofa next to Tobias, our legs and then our arms touching as we sit awkwardly side-by-side.

The room is completely silent but for the sounds of our breaths and our steady beating hearts. After what seems like an age, his hand finds mine and our fingers twist together in my lap, his thumb rubbing gently on the back of my hand. "While we were away, I was so scared. I thought you'd do something dumb, like let Caleb live and sacrifice yourself instead."

"I almost did." My head slides sideways on along the back of the sofa, and settles itself on his shoulder. The muscles have dwindled over the past few months, and the bone digs into the side of my face. "Caleb stopped me. If he hadn't stabbed me, I probably would have done it myself. At least then you- and Christina and Cara- you'd all still have your families."

The sheet crinkles as he shakes his head, squeezing my hand. "You did what you could do… It's better this way. There'll be no more fighting, no more factions. We can take control of the compound and only tell people what they need to know. This way we can make the world a better place- and I still have you. If you'd gone in there to try and stop everything, if you'd failed and died in the attempt… I'd have nobody." The words cut the final string that's holding me together and a tear trickles down my cheek, but Tobias catches it with his thumb before it splashes onto my shirt. "Hey, hey. What's wrong?"

I laugh, gurgling through my tears. "What's right?"

He laughs too, and suddenly, despite everything that's changed, it's almost like old times. His breath tickles my skin as he presses his forehead against mine, his free hand moving upwards to cup my face. I smile into his kiss as his lips brush mine, but the moment is over before it's even begun. No words pass between us, and the wound is too big to be healed by a bandage as temporary as a kiss, but the Tobias-shaped hole in my heart has healed enough for me to look him in the eye. "I love you."

"I love you too." He smiles, his eyes bright with all the happiness he's retained in his life despite everything he's lost. I can still feel his smile as he presses his lips against the top of my head, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear and rubbing the back of my hand with his thumb once more. "I love you too."


	2. Chapter 2

"What now?" Cara stands awkwardly at the door, a class of blank-faced compound employees sat in the rows of desks in the classroom behind her. They're staring numbly at a list of bullet-points on the whiteboard at the front of the room, their eyes travelling slowly over the red-scrawled writing that details a quick history of the city.

We wrote it ourselves, so now I understand why our faction history books were so corrupted- we noted only what we wanted them to know, what we wanted them to believe was true. After this lesson, they'll be sent into the city and dispersed throughout Chicago to reteach our old friends and family, to spread our history to a wider audience. We told them that there was an accident, that everyone's memories were wiped- but that we found the scrawled notes they now hold in their hands, and this is our history.

The sad thing is that that all believe it, that nobody questions our motives or suspects that we're lying. That everything we once knew and lived for is lost hurts on an internal level, aching more than the pulling sensation in my side that comes with every breath, but I know it is for the better. Without all the knowledge they used to have, there will be no more factions, no more divergent or factionless. There will be no more war, or fighting. Of course, Christina and Tobias and Cara have lost their families- but none of them are strangers to loss.

"I guess we try and get on with our lives." Christina answers. She holds a backpack in her hand, packed with all the belongings she's gathered during her time here. Her family won't remember her anymore, and Chicago holds too many dark memories for her. She's planning on getting away from the compound, travelling across America and finding herself a new life somewhere else. I don't want her to leave us, to set out into the fringe and struggle along without civilisation, but she brushes off my pleas for her to stay. "I have to do this, Tris." She smiles sadly, her lips curving upwards but her eyes remaining dull and tired. "I'll never forget you."

Her final words are kind of an ironic statement, considering everything that's happened, but she wraps her arms around each of us in return, turning her back on Cara and Tobias and I and trudging down the corridor. She lifts her arm in a final wave as she steps into the atrium, then walks through the front doors with her head drooped and her backpack trailing along the floor behind her.

"I can't believe she's gone." I whisper, but Tobias finds my hand and squeezes my fingers tightly. "There's worse places she could be." He nods towards the front row of desks inside the classroom, and Cara follows my gaze to glance sadly at Matthew. His hand moves quickly as he furiously scribbles down the points from the board, his tongue poking out from between his teeth. The wire frame of his battered glasses slides down his nose and he wiggles his face to move them back towards his eyes, and the knowledge that his beautiful mind is lost forever stabs at my stomach.

"Yeah." I pull Tobias away down the corridor, heading towards the Atrium. Christina is long gone; the rounded room empty and silent but for the quiet trickle of the fountain behind us. We sit on the marble seat ringing the fountain, the cold damp of the stone leeching through our trousers and into our flesh. "I don't want to go back to Chicago."

"Me neither." He responds, his head turned away from me so that he can watch the slow stream of water trickling down the rocks behind us. "But I think we have to." One of his eyelashes falls onto his cheek as he turns back towards me, his wide blue eyes finding mine as he trails one hand in the pool behind us. "I'm scared."

"I'm scared too." I slide from the bench, letting go of Tobias' hand and lying against the marble, my hair dangling over the water. "I don't want to wander the streets where my parents lived and died, where all the lies that formed my life were born and thrived. I can't do it, Tobias."

"You can. With me." His voice cracks and I realise how fragile we are, as a pair. The cracks between us are so vast, so irreparable, that if this is to work I have to trust him- or I will lose everything I have left.

"Okay," I mutter, my fingers tracing patterns on the glassy surface of the water. Coppery coins on the bottom of the pool shimmer in the afternoon light, glimmering like the fish-scales in the info-shows we used to watch in school. "Okay." My knees tingle as I stand up, the skin prickling as my blood rushes back into place. "I can do this. We can."

A smile plays on his lips as our fingers find each other, cold and wet from the water of the fountain. "Damn right we can."

In fact, by the time Cara finishes teaching the compound members and we pile them into an old coach, our bags are packed and I'm actually excited to be going back. It'll be difficult, but it's a place we know. All the people who made it such a dreadful place to exist are gone- Eric, Jeanine, Evelyn and Marcus- they're all either dead or worse. We can help rebuild the city, exterminate the memories of the factions and free our world…

Tobias smiles as he slides into the driver's seat of the bus, his long legs finding the peddles and settling onto the metal plates. The compound members follow us on, Matthew sliding into the leather seat beside me, behind Tobias. Cara sits opposite, next to Nita. Her face is tired, but the smile on her lips spreads to her eyes and I know that despite everything, she is eager to go back. Tobias too, has a grin spread across his face as the engine roars to life and the bus rolls forwards, rumbling slowly down the cracked tarmac towards the city, towards the future.

As we drive, there is no evidence to suggest the memory bomb even went off. The men and women in the bus chatter happily about their newly learned history, and Matthew natters on about the 'poor people in the city' and how we must 'save them' for the whole hour it takes for us to travel the long, straight road between the compound and the city.

We pull up to the fence and Tobias walks from the bus with a gun in his hand, loaded and ready to go. Bodies are slumped against the fence, long-dead and bloody, shot. "They must have been confused when they came around after the serum wore off." Cara whispers, horror etched on her face. "They must have panicked and shot each other."

Tobias steps back onto the bus and tucks his gun back into his belt as the gates to the city swing open. A sigh escapes him as he slumps back into the seat, his face pale. "There's six bodies. We're missing four. There's four people- at least- out there, armed with guns and confused, scared." He looks back at me as he flips the ignition again, the engine roaring to life underneath us. "We're going to need luck, and lots of it."

The second we pass through the fence, I'm filled with this feeling of unease and agitation that takes a hold of my chest and refuses to let go. The cool pressure of the gun in my hand, the squeeze of the trigger as I shot Will through the head- then the spurt of red as he transforms, first to my mother and then to my father, dying on the glass floor of the Divergent Headquarters. Finally my mind creates an image of Caleb, lying cold and still on a slab in the morgue, back in the compound. I bury my face in my hands and scream into the sleeves of Tobias' hooded shirt, sobbing as I try and force myself to breathe. Matthew, sweet and caring Matthew, wraps his arms around my arched back and holds me to the seat, rubbing my shoulder blade with his thumb as I pant in and out.

When the tears finally stop, I find the bus silent and still. Matthew's arms fall from around my body as he stands to look out of the front window of the bus, Cara's mouth falling open in a silent 'O'.

All around us are signs of destruction, the landscape grey and smoking rubble. "It's been two days." Tobias whispers, horror etched in fresh lines around his eyes. "Two days."

I scramble over Matthew's lap and stand on the steps of the bus as we drive closer to the city, winding around fallen lamp posts and avoiding the concrete slabs of fallen homes. A small shape quivers amidst the rubble, a tiny human being with scarred and dirty skin and straggly hair. Our plan not only failed, but caused utter destruction. All around us, everything we knew and everything we fought for has been destroyed. The peace could not be kept- in sheer panic; the people we knew and loved destroyed everything they held dear…

No. I shake my head and press my hand against the windscreen, watching as the grey blurs of our home spin around us. How can everything be gone?

The bus screeches to a grinding halt as a bedraggled man runs out into the middle of the road, a dented gun held in one quivering hand. Tears cut tracks in his grime-smeared cheeks, his shaking arms held out from his body. His gun is pointed at Tobias, who is sat in the driver's seat with his hands raised in surrender. The engine is still running- he could just drive forwards and crush the man under the weight of the bus… but no, he can't. I know this because the shaking man standing before us, with his mismatched clothing and thinning hair and the gun clutched in his bloody fingers- is Tobias' father.


	3. Chapter 3

Tobias is pale, his mouth open in shock. His raised hands tremble- with anger or fear I can't tell- as Marcus stands before us. The blank look on the older man's face makes it clear that he doesn't recognise either of us, and my heart twists and squirms inside my chest. I could shoot him now, take him down so we can drive into the city and right all the wrongs we made, but that wouldn't solve anything. Instead, I press the door release buttons and against the protests of Cara and Tobias, step from the bus. "Marcus."

"Marcus?" He looks repulsed at the mention of the name, like the word is strange to him, like it doesn't belong.

"That's your name." I try and keep my voice quiet and level but loud enough to reach him as I shuffle along the front of the bus, my empty hands outstretched in a gesture of peace. "Marcus Eaton."

"What are you doing here? Who are you?"

"That boy in that bus- he's called Tobias. I'm Beatrice- Tris. We're here to help."

He lowers his gun, straightening his shoulders and putting his hands on his hips. "Is that so?" I nod, risking a glance back at Tobias as his father smiles in my direction. "And what, may I ask, do you think you can help with?"

"I think it would help us to help you if you told us the kind of thing you need help with." Cara appears beside me, wringing her hands in front of her as she casts nervous glances back at the people in the bus. "Start by letting us know about the problems you are facing here in the city."

Marcus smiles a sinister smile with a glint of malice in his eyes. "Oh, no problems. I think I've got everything under control here." His fingers stroke the handle of his gun, his eyes narrowing as his lips form a grin. There are plenty of problems in the city, I can see them in the lines in his face- but his solutions are echoed in the gun, his lifeline.

"Then perhaps you can guide us to the city- and we can help you from there." He shakes his head, his gaze turning back to the bus. Time slows as he lifts his arm, squinting down the length of his gun as he aims it at the windscreen. A scream escapes my mouth, high pitched and grief-stricken, as the bullet flies forwards. It strikes the glass, which shatters into a thousand pieces and falls onto the ground like sharp snow. My eyes search the wreck for Tobias, who falls to the floor as the last of the glass clatters to the ground.

"Tobias!" My heart races as I duck back through the door and up the steps, past the shattered window and onto the floor, next to Tobias. His face is covered in tiny cuts, his eyes half open against the black carpet beside the seat. I'm shaking as my eyes search his body, searching for the entry point of the bullet. Come on…

"Tris. Don't worry." He whispers from the floor, his dark blue eyes half open against the blood trickling down his face. "He didn't get me, find out what he wants."

"Okay… Okay…" I nod rapidly, wiping the tears from my face as I push myself upright, staggering back down the steps and facing Marcus.

"You think I forgot? Like the rest of them?" Cara looks at him in horror, her fists trembling with rage at her sides. "I'm a good actor, aren't I?"

"You monster!" I draw my gun from my pocket, holding it out from my body and pointing it at Marcus' chest. Memories of the fear landscape flutter to the fore of my mind, the beat of his belt pounding down on my back stinging like fire. "You remember then? Everything you did?"

His smile tells me he does, and that he's not sorry. "I rule now, _Beatrice_. This city is mine."

My finger finds the trigger, but Cara is standing right beside me. I can't kill Tobias' father like I killed Will, and if he still has his memory- perhaps there are others too, others who remember. Others who we need to eliminate.

"It's not yours. It will never be yours. And you dare to kill your own son?" I think back to Tobias on the bus, who will be able to hear all of this as it unfolds.

"How else can I rule? You're just a girl- both of you, you're weak. Two girls and a bus of brain-dead outsiders? You've got no chance. With Tobias, you had power… but now- you're mine."

My blood freezes in my veins, ice flooding through my hands and my heart as I look up at him through my eyelashes. "You wouldn't dare." I mutter, but he's raised his gun again, pointing it at Cara.

"Perhaps I should eliminate the brains, too. With just you and your little friends left…" His finger twitches on the trigger and I dive forwards, my arms grabbing his wrists and pushing them over his head as we hit the ground, the air rushing from his lungs.

Each of my knees digs into the crumbled tarmac beside his waist, my hands desperately clawing at the gun to free it from his grip. It finally comes loose and I throw it at Cara, shifting one knee so I'm half-standing over him, my leg hovering over his crotch. "Try me."

He smiles beneath me, the familiar evil glint entering his eyes once more. It sends a shiver down my spine, chilling my bones as Cara approaches with the handgun. She kneels and holds it against his forehead, her thin face twisting into a smile as she realises the power we hold over the old Abnegation leader. "Get up." I snarl, putting pressure where it hurts before pushing myself to my feet, pulling him with me.

I drag him onto the bus and up the steps, past Tobias, still on the carpeted floor. Marcus doesn't even glance at his son's body, spitting onto the Dauntless symbol printed on the back of his neck as he passes and slides into the cracked leather driver's seat. Cara slides into the bench-seat behind him, pressing the gun to the back of his neck as the people from the compound gasp in shock. I stand in front of Tobias, looking out over the rest of the bus, and clap my hands until they fall silent.

The engine roars to life beneath us, filling the hush of the bus with a low rumble. Wind howls past the seats, whipping my hair around my face as I kneel on the floor beside Tobias, my hand clutching his as Marcus drives forwards, swerving around fallen lamp-posts and rubble lying across the road. We drive past the old Abnegation sector and Tobias's hand twitches beneath my palm, his fingertips catching at my wrist. His eyes are still closed, but I know he is listening intently, ready to jump up and act at a moment's notice. For now, he is dead. He is invisible.

Whispers fill the bus as we draw to a stop in the town, the wind of movement calming around our heads as Marcus applies the brakes. The engine cuts out and we're left there, awkwardly waiting for the next move to be made. It's then that I realise that it's me- it's my job to guide these people…

But I fear that they will soon be as corrupted as Marcus, as all our old friends. I fear that we are too late to save our people; that these workers who we barely know will die at the hands of Marcus and his cohorts in the city. My fingers ache as I straighten them, withdrawing them from Tobias' grip and pushing myself to my feet. I cough and the whispers patter out, leaving only the low hiss of the wind catching on the few fragments of glass left in the windshield to fill my ears.

"Please, go about your missions as they were assigned to you. Group A- set up a care and education centre in the old Candor headquarters- you know where that is? Good. Group B- you're on finding children and taking them to the centre, while Group C is finding adults. Group D is on security. You have already been armed and taught how to shoot, but you need to hold yourself back unless violence is absolutely required." I'm surprised at how steady my voice sounds as I stop talking, taking in once more the silent hush of forty listening ears. "Move out."

A man and a woman who were sitting at the back of the bus stand up and swing open the double doors behind them. The back half of the bus files off that way, silently jumping to the ground and forming hushed groups behind the bus while the front half step past me and down the steps, onto the cracked street below. I stand beside Tobias, protecting his curled hands from being crushed by the stampede of eager helpers. Unease settles in my stomach like a ticking time bomb- how many of these people will leave this city alive? I know that if Marcus has anything to do with it, it won't be many.

"What shall we do with our friend here?" Cara asks, cocking her head as she shifts the gun on Marcus' head, drawing a line up the back of his skull and around the side, so that the barrel is pressed to his temple. She smiles, but her heart isn't in it. She's seen enough death, we all have, and she doesn't yet know that Tobias is still alive. For all she knows, it's just the two of us…

"Oh…" I try and put some emotion into my voice as I talk, thinking about the real grief that I would be feeling if I had truly lost Tobias and letting it swim to the surface, overflowing from my eyes and my lips so my voice cracks and my cheeks become stained with tears. "I don't know. Find somewhere to lock him up, find someone to guard him…" My gaze falls to Tobias' still face. He's too good at lying frozen, curled in on himself like the bullet hit his chest. How many times has he done this in the past? Hidden from his father by staying still and silent, not daring to move for fear of more pain?

"There's one other person who didn't experience the effects of the memory serum, you know. All this destruction is just as much her fault as it is mine." I look up at Marcus, my vision blurry with stinging tears. My chest heaves, my breaths coming in agonising pants as I step up to him.

"Who?"

"I'll never tell you." He smiles, cunning.

There's only one more person in this city who would have known about the impending doom- Tobias told her. Evelyn. "Oh, but I already know. Cara, after we've dealt with our little friend, perhaps we should hunt down his ex-wife." She nods, but the gun slips from Marcus' head and he flips around, grabbing Cara's wrist and sinking his teeth into her flesh. A scream echoes through the bus, high-pitched and ringing in my ears. He lets go of her hand and forms a fist, swinging into her chin and sending her flying. She sprawls limp across the seat, and Marcus grabs her gun from the floor, pointing it at my forehead. I feel Tobias tense behind me as Marcus steps sideways, his feet crunching in the broken glass on the floor.

The gun clicks as Marcus pulls gently on the trigger, the bullet sliding into position, ready to fire- but the safety is still on. I lunge and grab at what little hair remains on Marcus's head, but he's already leapt sideways. He rolls on the road outside and gets to his feet, sprinting away into the dusty darkness as I withdraw my gun from my pocket- but he's too far away.

"Is he gone?" The whisper sounds from the floor, a finger trailing the bare skin on my ankle.

"Yeah, for now." I bend down and run my fingers along his forehead, ruffling his hair as he opens his eyes and smiles at me.

"What do you think of my acting?"

I lean closer to him and press my lips against his cheek. "Terrifyingly believable."

Cara moans from over my shoulder and Tobias snaps upright, his cheek red with blood. "Tobias, you're bleeding." I point out, my hand gingerly touching the sticky skin on his neck.

"So are you." He points to my palms, spiked with shards of glass and dotted with smears of blood. Touché.

"Tris…?" Cara mumbles, and I push myself to my knees. We're vulnerable here, out in the open. Marcus knows are location, and could bring back an army of insurgents at any moment.

Her jaw is swollen and her eyes unfocussed as she struggles to push herself upright, smearing blood on the cracked window behind her head as she leans forwards, her face in her hands. "You okay?" She nods silently and I sit beside her, pressing my leg against hers as I hold my stinging hands out in front of me, the gun dangling from my finger. "Cover us?" I throw the gun to Tobias and he nods, wiping the blood off on his trousers and flicking the safety off.

My hands burn as I stumble past Tobias and start digging through the bus, fumbling in all the little storage spaces until I find what I'm searching for. "Here." I place the sticky green box in my lap as I sit down, flicking open the catch and digging through the contents. "Aspirin and an instant-ice pack." I press them into Cara's hands and she smiles gratefully, holding the ice to her scalp as she dry-swallows the pills. "Sorry we don't have any water." She grimaces and shakes her head, biting her lips as the bitter white rounds slide painfully down her throat.

I find an antiseptic wipe in the box and struggle with the packaging until Tobias comes over, flicking on the safety of my gun and tucking it into his belt. "Shh, don't worry. I'm quick, remember? Here, let me help."

His breath tickles my chin as he pushes his forehead against mine, tearing open the wipe and running it gently over my hands. My lips sear with pain as I bite them against the movement of the glass in my flesh, ignoring the dots of blood as they reappear to stain my skin. When at last my hands are white again instead of red and Tobias has worked most of the glass free with a pair of tweezers and my skin is swathed in clean white bandages, I try to do his face. "No, we don't have the time." He murmurs, casting a quick glance around before he turns to Cara.

"You ready to go?"

She nods and pushes herself up, swaying on the spot for a second before she manages to regain her balance. Tobias nods and creeps up the length of the bus, dropping through the double doors and helping both me and Cara to find the floor.

"I can't stay with you." He says, holding onto my wrist instead of my hands. "Marcus thinks I'm dead. If I can keep it that way, it'll be for the better."

"No. Don't leave me." I know I sound pathetic, but back there for that split second I realised what it would be like to lose him all over again. "Please."

He gives Cara a look and steps closer to me, his forehead against mine. His breath is warm on my lips, tickling my cheeks as he closes the distance between us with a kiss. "I'll see you soon."

The hurt in his eyes as he steps away and drops his hand from mine is real. He doesn't want to leave, but with him here our mission is sure to fail. "Okay." The gun is cold and heavy when he presses it back into my hand, but I know he won't let me go without it. "I love you."

When he smiles, it is the saddest smile I have ever seen on his lips. He knows that his promise to come back could go wrong, could be shot down dead by Marcus or Evelyn or any of the others- but that my words are the truest words I could say. "I love you too, Tris."

I close my eyes and absorb his words as he walks away, and by the time I open them again, he is gone.

"Come on." Cara drops the icepack from her head and rubs her cold hand against her thigh. "We have a city to save."


	4. Chapter 4

TRIS

The streets are eerily quiet as we tread the paths we used to follow every day. I pass places I walked through on my way to school, barely recognisable through the rubble and the wreckage that seems to have magically appeared since the day we left. The old factionless sector is silent and empty, and the events of the past few months have hardened me to the point that the memory of those poor people evokes not fear, but pity and disgust.

We head down an alleyway littered with lumpy black shapes. At first glance we thought they were people, but on grisly close inspection only sagging yellowed skin and the beginnings of bloody decay of week-old corpses were revealed. A small child lies in the very middle of the dark street, the grey-bricked houses rising up on either side of us and cutting out all but one single shaft of sunlight. The yellow light falls on the bruised face of the youngster, her chapped and swollen lips and her sunken eyes. My stomach reels, and vomit presses at my throat as I turn away, focussing instead on the walls.

This is a mistake however, as the grey concrete is splattered with blood and other fluids; brown and black and red against the rough stone. I look at Cara and feel the wave of guilt hits me in the chest, once and then again and again, the knowing that somewhere in this maze-like metropolis there is a blackened splatter of blood painted by my hand.

The air of the street hits me as I run from the alleyway, gasping as I fall to my knees. "We're too obvious like this." Cara says, her hand finding my shoulder as I stare at the ground. "These clothes- nobody here has anything like this. I'll get you something, okay?"

I nod, gasping down buckets of air as I press my sore hands into my knees. I'm okay. I'm okay.

She returns a few minutes later with a pair of black jeans and a red sweatshirt, each tainted with the sweet smell of decay. I gag as I duck back into the alleyway, stripping off my pale compound uniform and pulling the new clothes over my head. "Were any of them…?" She knows what I mean. Christina's family. She shakes her head as she fastens her own trousers, pushing the sleeves of her blue jumper up to her elbows.

"She saw them just the other day, remember? When we came to try and persuade them to leave with us, to be safe..." She looks up at the sky, her hair falling away from her face as she squints into the sun. "Those bodies are a couple of days old. They were all shot through the heads- so this wasn't an accidental thing. It was accurate, calculated."

I nod and push myself away from the wall, trying to ignore the stomach-churning scent of death on my clothes as I rub my hands on my jeans. "I can't do this, Cara."

She steps closer to me and wraps her arms around my body. Our ears press against each other as she pushes her head to mine, her hands crossing over my shoulder blades. When she steps back, her cheeks are flushed, her eyes damp. "I know it's hard. I'm questioning it too… is it even worth it? There's nobody left for me- for either of us. I just… I don't think Tobias could leave. Knowing what his parents are doing to the place he's grown up in."

"Yeah... I just wish it wasn't us, you know. I mean I'm glad we still have our memories, that we remember everything that's gone on and we can work to make the world a better place but… I wish it wasn't our responsibility. To make everything right again."

Cara steps back, straightening her shoulders and pulling her sweatshirt sleeves down again so that they cover her hands. I notice the blood crusted in her hair, the browning smear on the back of her neck, but she's smiling and bouncing easily on the balls of her feet. "You okay with checking Erudite HQ first?"

TOBIAS

The streets are gloomy, the air filled with dust and the smell of death as I step over bundles of cloth and blackening pools of blood. Not one living soul prowls these quarters, and the sun is rapidly setting behind dark grey clouds. I need to find him- Dad, I mean. If I can call him that.

Of course, when I spoke to Evelyn about taking the memory serum, I didn't expect any of this chaos to ensue. Heck, we formed a peace treaty, and now the city's in ruins again!

When I got away from the bus, my first thoughts were to track him down, follow him and see if I could find Evelyn. By the time I got into the maze of alleyways that formed the Abnegation sector of the city however, he'd vanished. Eventually I find a street I recognise- despite how similar they all look- and find the one building I've been subconsciously searching for since we arrived.

The city is plunged into darkness as the sun finally dips below the horizon, the streetlamps flickering on and off before cutting out completely- but I don't need light to find my home. The path crunches under my feet as I step across the small, plain garden and push against the door, stepping into the darkened entryway. Even after all this time, I remember to jump the stairs that creak on my way up to my room.

Everything of value is long gone, from the blue glass sculpture to scraps of twisted metal and useless papers that I kept in stacks under my bed. The bedframe itself is askew, the sheets and blankets lying forlorn on the dusty floor and the mattress propped against the fallen wardrobe. It takes only a few minutes to right, and by that point the tiredness from my weary walk about the city catches up with me. Here is a stupid place to sleep, I know, but where else can I go?

I decide that here is as good a place as any and lie on my straightened mattress, pulling the musty duvet up to my chin and closing my eyes. In the silent darkness, it's easy to imagine the weight of my mother perched on the edge of the mattress, her hand stroking my bruised arm beneath the duvet as I drift slowly to sleep. It's also easy to imagine the glowing red eyes of a demon hiding beneath my bed, or a monster creeping from my cupboard. Shivers run up my spine as I roll to face the door, my eyes open wide against the devils of the night until sheer exhaustion forces them to close.

Consciousness reappears with indecent haste, that is to say far too quickly. I awake with tired and stinging eyes, my clenched fists tight against the morning as I listen to the faint voices swimming up from the hallway. I spring upright, silently swearing as I scramble on the floor for my sneakers and pull them onto my feet. "If the girl is in the city, then surely he is too?" My ear aches against the splintered wood of my bedroom door as I struggle to remember where all the creaky planks are, balancing haphazardly on my toes as I strain to pinpoint the source of the voice.

"Ah, yes…" He coughs and I know who it is, the owner of the voice. Oh no, oh no. I stumble away from the door and land with a thump on one of the planks, and the voices downstairs fall silent with an eerie hush. The stairs groan as one pair of footsteps and then the other creep upwards, quickly venturing closer and closer.

The window screams as I slide the panel of glass upwards, ducking through the gap and letting myself dangle by my fingertips. It feels almost like dangling over the pit, with my worst nightmare at the bottom and certain death awaiting me at the top. The moon shines overhead, white and glowing against a black sky, and it sneers as I scrape my knees in the dirt. Shouting sounds from inside the house as I pick myself up and sprint down the street, leaping over the fence of a house a couple of doors down and throwing myself inside.

The smartest place to hide, I remember, is right under the noses of your enemies. Far enough away that they won't immediately find you, but not so far that they manage to catch up with you. The moonlight shines through the plain glass pane in the door, illuminating the small hallway which is identical to my own. Like all Abnegation homes, this one has plain walls and floors, a grey rug in the centre of the living room with a small couch and two armchairs on either side. A blackened fireplace is littered with curled and charred paper, and I step forward cautiously, scooping up a handful of the photographs in my hands and moving closer to the window. There's no mistaking who she is, the girl with the long mousy-blonde hair twisted delicately into a knot, her huge round eyes and her long, straight nose. She is the image of her mother and father combined, standing beside her brother with his darker hair and square jaw. Tris.

I flip through the photos, finding images of the children playing together in the plain sitting room as kids, sharing the simple dolls that were the only toys we were allowed. The next photo is one of Natalie and Andrew on their wedding day, wearing their Abnegation plain-clothes and surrounded by neighbours. My father is among them, younger and with fewer lines in his face. Hatred bubbles up inside me as I look over to my mother standing beside him, a smile on her lips but her eyes already showing signs of pain and betrayal.

There are six salvageable photographs in the fireplace, the rest of them falling to ashes the instant my fingertips brush over them. It's obvious that these photographs were not meant to exist, that somebody had tried to destroy the evidence as the brainwashed Dauntless marched down these streets. I tuck them into my pocket, stroking at the curled and cracked paper with my fingertips as I wander through Tris' childhood home.

The walls here have seen happier times then mine, I realise as I step into the kitchen. The paper on the walls is clean and smooth, not scratched and torn where drinking glasses have smashed against it and shattered into hundreds of pieces. Even the plain wooden table is in better condition, not cut into by my knife at mealtimes or blackened by pots of spilt ink. Something in the house sings simple songs of happiness and home, instead of echoing the agonising screams like the cold floors of my own home.

Upstairs I find the mirror, hidden behind a sliding panel in the wall. I imagine Tris sitting on a stool in front of this mirror every few months, with her mother standing behind her back as ringlets of hair fell to the floor.

I pass the bathroom door and step into the small bedroom at the front of the house. A single bed is pushed against the wall, a messy desk covered with scrawled and crumpled paper sitting under the small window. The moonlight casts gloomy shadows across Caleb's taut sheets, the spindly shadow of a silky spider web dancing across the grey fabric. Behind his desk and stuffed under his bed and beneath his pillow are books, tens of crumpled paperbacks on subjects from serum theory to quantum mechanics. Somehow, all of this feels cold and wrong. The inhabitant of this room is gone and dead. He gave his life in an attempt to stop this chaos from continuing, and his sacrifice was made in vain.

Heart aching, I leave the room. The door swings shut behind me with a soft click, and I step across the hallway into the other small bedroom. Beatrice's room.

The crumpled sheets make me smile as I step through the door, the whole room lit with the soft glow of the coming dawn. When I press my nose to the soft grey fabric, the sweet scent of the Abnegation girl swims into my brain; that first waft of Tris as she clambered from the net on her descent into Dauntless.

My eyes still burn with the tiredness of the night, and once more I'm more than aware of the stupidity of my idea. For the second time in one night though, I stop caring. I pull my sneakers from my feet and lie on my side in Tris' bed, looking over to the window as the sun's light shines off the windowpanes of the houses across the street. The pillow still smells of her, even though I know it's just the smell of the simple Abnegation soap. The demons of the night don't creep from their darkest corners as I let myself sink into the mattress, the duvet spread lightly over my legs. I close my eyes, and once more drift off to sleep.


	5. Chapter 5

TRIS

We emerge from the abandoned Erudite headquarters into darkened streets. The huge glass-fronted building was empty, every book, computer and paper ripped from the walls and burnt in the streets. Even some of the internal walls had been destroyed, so that no room was left untouched. Worryingly, the serums lab was empty too, beakers and tubes smashed on the floor but none of the colourful liquid anywhere to be found. My heart catches in my throat as the implications of this revelation rise in my stomach like acid.

"Dauntless or rest up?" I turn to Cara, whose face is pale and withdrawn.

"Is there anywhere we can sleep? Anywhere safe?"

"Marcus knows we're here." I answer, feeling the weight of the gun in my pocket as I turn to face her. "The only places I can think of are too obvious, too dangerous."

"We're going to Dauntless anyway, right? Want to check it out?" Cara shrugs as she finds my eyes in the darkness, our pale and increasingly grimy skin shining in the moonlight.

We follow the moonlight to the tracks running through the city, but there are no trains running tonight. Instead we clamber up a tall and spindly ladder, rolling onto the gleaming tracks metres above the streets and beginning the long walk across the city.

Our footsteps are loud and metallic on the blackened grill of the tracks, echoing as our sneakers slam against the grid. The track begins to rise, but it's another half hour before we're level with the tall building that forms the back entrance to the Dauntless compound. From up here and without the momentum of the train to propel us forwards, the gap between the tracks and the building is immense.

We exchange glances and step up to the edge of the track, our toes hovering over the hundred-foot drop below us as I prepare myself to jump. The pavement, illuminated by the stars above our heads, wavers in the distance, the broken body of one of the fallen initiates materialising on the concrete.

Cara pushes my shoulder as I take a step back, her eyes wide and questioning. Finally, she bends her knees and launches herself from the tracks, her arms spread wide and straight. She soars over the gap like a bird, landing elegantly on her knees on the rough top of the building. "Come on!" She shouts at me, and I take another step back. My heel knocks against the first of the tracks, two metres from the edge. I take a deep breath and run forwards, taking two strides across the metal and flinging myself over the gap.

My chest hits the edge of the wall with a hollow thump, my arms quivering as I pull myself up and over the side. I lie on my back on the gravelled rooftop, taking deep breaths of the cool night air. "When did I stop being good at that?" I gasp, feeling the heat rush back into my cheeks as Cara pulls me to my feet.

"Hey, you were stabbed just a few days ago. Don't worry about it." I smile gratefully, but I know my failure isn't just due to my injuries. The motivation just isn't there anymore, and her excuses made up on my behalf hurt more than the physical wounds.

"Yeah… how good are you with heights?"

"I'm here, aren't I?" Cara smiles, stepping up to the edge of the building. I step up beside her, looking down into the black abyss waiting below like a gawping mouth. "After three?" When did the Erudite take charge? I nod, clenching my stomach against the reeling fear building like a wave. Something feels wrong, off. Suddenly, I don't want to jump.

"One… two…"

"Three." She opens her arms wide, turning around and falling backwards into the hole with a yelp of pleasure. I follow, letting the wind whip my hair around my face and ears as I plummet through the darkness.

Cara screams, and my heart freezes in my chest. I continue on my unstoppable descent until I hit the net, the ropes curling softly around my body. Hands from beneath grab at me as I scramble upright, trying to see Cara and the source of her scream. It's dreadfully silent, the hands sticking through the net and strangling my ankles as I claw at the ropes, crying out for freedom. It's not real, it's not real…

I kick downwards and meet a face with a satisfying crunch. A groan sounds from below and a pair of hands releases my legs, so I kick out again and again until finally I'm free. Skinny figures are hidden in the shadows on the small platform just past the net, and I run at them with my gun in my fingers. "Who are you?!" They shout, emerging from the darkness with weapons raised and ready to fire. "What are you doing here?"

I freeze in place as recognition flutters in my mind like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon. The dark skin, with sunken eyes and fuzzy black hair; the families of two of my best friends, drawn together in times of trouble and social unrest. I can see now why Cara and I are so out of place here, our pale skin glowing against their caramel tones. Their eyes bore into me, making me feel as small as a mouse while they and their metal guns tower over my heads.

"My name is Tris." I squeak, trying to straighten my shoulders and push my head up despite my sunken position, unstable on the bouncy net. "This is Cara. We came from outside. We want to help you."

I'm desperate to stay strong, but my voice cracks as I look into Zeke's eyes. "Zeke?" Cara pushes herself to her feet somewhere in the shadows at the edge of the net and bounces over to me.

"Oh god." She whispers, finding the fuzzy hair and wet eyes of Christina's mother. "Do they remember?"

"I don't think so." I whisper in reply, holding Zeke's age though my chin drops to my chest. Finally the courage comes, filling me with the strength to lift up my head and look properly at the families. "Christina. Uriah. Do the names mean anything to you?"

The adults shake their heads, but Zeke holds my stare. He remembers. I know he does.

"Why are you asking? What do you want?" Christina's mother steps forwards, her voice shaking as she holds out a gun in her trembling arm. Even in the darkness and from this distance, I can tell that the safety is on. For now at least, I am safe.

Giving her the benefit of the doubt, I slide my gun back into my belt and raise my hands. "They were friends of ours, joining us on our mission. We've lost them, that's all."

"How did you find us?" Zeke steps off the platform as the hands vanish from beneath the net, stepping onto the edge of the interweaved rope. "How did you get here?" My brain goes blank- how can I explain without telling him everything? "Where is my brother?"

His final question stabs me like a knife, the pain of loss rippling through my body. Tobias has already broken the news to him once- how can I stand here and watch as the grief cuts through him once again? "Zeke… I…" His face drops. He remembers- he knows. Like I with Caleb, he just hopes that the loss he feels is not real. "I'm sorry."

"They're okay. They're with us." He turns back to the crowd in the shadows, thicker now that the owners of the hands from below the net have joined us. "They're freedom fighters."

TOBIAS

I awake to the silence of an empty house, the tiredness of a disturbed night forming a crust on my eyelashes. Rubbing my eyes, I push aside the warm duvet and stretch in the familiar grey room, identical to my own. It's only when I take in the arrangement of the furniture that I take in with a harsh reality just exactly where I stand. I straighten Tris' pillow on her bed and flatten out her duvet, thinking about leaving her just yesterday. The cold of the air hits me and I shake my arms out to warm them up as I slip my shoes on, checking for the photographs in my jacket. They're still there, the blackened edges crushed to dust inside my pocket.

With my shoes untied and sleep still stuck in the corner of my eyes, I stumble from Tris' bedroom and down the steep staircase, wandering into the kitchen with a yawn. The cupboards are bare but for a few old tins of plain beans and peaches in sugared water. Simple food, the staple delights spread throughout the city as the bare basics to survive on. I fumble in the drawers until I find a knife and stab the top of the can of peaches, shanking the soft flesh of the sweet orange fruit on the blade and scooping the dripping half-spheres into my mouth. The sweetness floods my mouth with a sugary shock that shakes the last of the sleep from my body with a shudder, giving me the energy I know I need to keep moving. I can't stay here another night- besides, I have to find Marcus.

It's not long before I hear footsteps and soft voices on the street outside, murmuring as they approach the house. Through the window I spot a pair of women, their hungry hands fumbling at the front door of the house. The tin splatters peaches and sticky sugary water over the floor as I drop it in my haste to leave, my laces whipping around my ankles as I sprint through the back door and into the small yard behind the house. As I swing the back door to a soft close behind me, the front door opens with an almighty bang and the excited chattering of the two women fills the kitchen.

I peek through the back window as they step blindly over my spilt can and begin to rifle through the cupboards, withdrawing the tin of beans and some dry packets of rice and noodles. They split open the packets, throwing the rubbish onto the floor as they prepare to cook the food, smashing the wooden chairs against the solid floor and gathering the splintered wood into a pile in the centre of the kitchen. Smoke begins to fill the room, snaking over the windowpane like inky black tendrils as they heat up a pot of water to cook the food.

My heart contracts inside my chest as I step away from the blackening glass, slipping out of the yard through the tall wooden gate set into the grey walls. The photographs rustle in my pocket, and suddenly those few scraps of Tris' childhood become the most valuable things in the world. I straighten my back, pull the hood of my jacket over my head and march back into the city.


	6. Chapter 6

TRIS

We sit in the dining hall, gathered on one table with only the closest lamps lit to lessen the darkness. Christina's mother sits next to her daughter, gently stroking her shoulder. "Where is my daughter?" She asks, her hand twitching on the young girl's arm. "Where is Christina?"

I look to Cara and shake my head, looking back up at Christina's mom with a sigh. "We don't know. She was supposed to come here with us, but she decided to leave. She thought you wouldn't remember her."

"There's a lot we don't know- that Marcus and Evelyn have warned us about. They're hiding it from us, knowledge that we used to have but we now lack. They say if we co-operate we can have it back, but we don't want to take part in what they're doing... But I'd never forget her. Not my daughter."

"What is it? What are they doing?" My hands claw anxiously at the edge of the table, my fingers sore against the worn wood. "What are they planning?"

She shakes her head, looking around the table at the gathered crowd. "They told us about the Divergent."

I swallow, dropping my fingers from the table and letting my hands curl in my lap. "What did they say?"

"They told us they had to be eliminated. That they're dangerous. Marcus and Evelyn- they've armed the whole city, told everyone to track down the divergent and take them out."

This is nothing new, just a repeat of history here in this poor, broken city. "And people have agreed?" Zeke nods in the corner, his eyes focussed on the table in front of me. I look down at the dark wood, my eyes catching on a pale and splintered engraving before me. Two numbers, encircled by a shallow heart in the wood; a four and a six, barely visible in the shade. My throat clenches, my lungs straining to move as I look back up at Zeke to see him nod again.

"What happened to Uriah?" His voice croaks. He knows the answer, he just wants to- needs to- hear it again. He needs to know that it's true.

I cough as I shift awkwardly, unable to look him in the eye as the truth flips over in my stomach. "He…" No. I have to look at him. He deserves that one thing. "There was a raid in the compound. They blew up a wall- and he was standing by it. We did our best, we really did… but his brain. He was just gone. You came to say goodbye- the both of you," I look now to his mother, who is glaring at me with cold and unfeeling eyes as I detail the death of her youngest son. "We let you see him before we turned off the machines. He was never going to wake up." Cara's hand finds my hand and touches it softly under the table, a comforting gesture but one that makes me want to curl in a ball and sob against the floor all the same.

"You girls probably want to sleep, right?" A man steps up behind Christina's mother, a wide smile on his lips to detract from the grief circling the two families. "Come on, there's plenty of space in these caves."

His naivety takes the icy chill off my spine and I get to my feet, following him from the dining room and down the winding corridor to the floor of the Pit. The tattoos inked on my skin tingle when I look up through the glass roof, still splattered with the fluorescent paint of burst paintballs. This is where I belong.

TOBIAS

I'm on my way to Dauntless HQ to track down Tris when more sets of voices stops me in my tracks, forcing me to duck into the doorway of one of the old Candor houses. This time, instead of two starving women or the parents I have disowned, it's a moderately-sized group of men and women, heavily armed with huge grey guns strapped to their backs. One of the women carries a short knife, glinting in the morning sun.

All I can do is hope the shadows conceal me as the group march past, haste quickening their stride. "They said there was one in the grey streets- a Divergent." My blood runs icy in my veins, my hands trembling at my side as I push myself as far as I can into the black alcove of the terraced house. Every person unaccounted for in these streets is in danger- everyone we brought with us from the compound is in risk of death or worse, and the same goes for Cara and me and Tris.

As soon as the group has passed, I duck out from the doorway and start down the street. I reach an alleyway and sprint down it, running flat-out towards the train tracks, the easiest route to the Dauntless HQ. My heart pounds with every step and the rushing blood in my ears pants her name, drawing me through the city.

I reach the edge of Candor headquarters and slow to a walk, trying to merge with the small crowds rushing to the double doors of the Merciless Mart. Their hunched backs have the weight of the world hung upon them, the future of our people. Even though they don't remember the past, it's their job to provide the present. I try to swerve from the crowd and edge around the building, but I'm swept up amongst them and carried up to the courtroom in one of the lifts.

Strange faces surround me on the circular benches, and I try and keep my head down as Evelyn walks into the hall. She casts a glance around but doesn't notice me, and draws down a white screen affixed to the far wall. I can't see a projector, but images flash up on the screen and she begins to explain, and I realise what this is. It's a lesson.

"This world we see around us is one of utter destruction. Who is to blame?" She flicks to the next slide, and eight faces appear on the slide. Tris, Christina, Cara, Uriah, Tori, Peter, Caleb and myself. Peter's face is crossed through with thick blue lines, Tori's with red. "The Defectors. The Divergent. These people left our fair city, setting off the memory bomb and causing all of the destruction and confusion we see in our world around us." The woman on my left shifts awkwardly, her eyes flickering over to my face and then back to the screen. She knows.

"Tori Wu," She points to Tori and her red cross, and my eyes dampen with anger. "Divergent defector. Assisted in the escape of the other defectors, was shot dead just outside the city. Peter Hayes. Willingly re-integrated himself into the city and is now receiving the same information as you. He is not a threat." She looks up, her eyes scanning the crowd as she directs her thin metal pointer to the last faces on the bottom row. "Caleb Prior, unconfirmed location. He could be in the city, or back at the defector base- same goes for Uriah Pedrad. Both major threats, though minor compared to the other defectors."

I gulp, my dry throat itching in the heat of the tall, circular room. I have to get out of here…

"Christina Montez. Whereabouts unknown, but is likely to be in the city. Her family is also within the fenced boundary, though we have not yet been able to locate either her mother or her sister. Cara Young and Beatrice Prior are both confirmed to be within the city, accompanied by a band of up to fifty other defectors. Marcus has informed me that they will be planning to round up 'lost' citizens and bring them here to safety. We will need around the clock guards in this building and around the city to ensure that we catch these defectors. One point that I feel needs fully expressing- _the named defectors are to be arrested and brought to me alive._"

I swallow, my hands twitching in my lap as the woman next to me fully turns her head, looking right at me. She stands, and Evelyn smiles at her, raising her hand until the woman sits down. "The last defector is Tobias Eaton." She points to my face, and raises her head to look me in the eye. "He is my son, and has committed the ultimate act of betrayal," she smiles, closing the pointer and tucking it into her pocket as she tilts her head towards me. "And he is in this room."


	7. Chapter 7

TRIS

My eyes are foggy with sleep when I wrench them open; the tiny face on the old glowing watch next to my face telling me it's almost mid-day. My fingers fumble for the lamp next to the bed and flick the switch, and I sit up.

Instantly, I'm hit with reminders of him. I don't know what I expected- this room is his after all- but still I curl against his pillows and refuse to let the day corrupt the memories I hold. Today Cara and I will venture into the city to track down the people from the Bureau, taking Zeke and some of the other 'Defectors' with us to help save more innocent lives. We know the risks of course- there are anti-divergent task teams prowling the streets, heavily armed with permission and trained to shoot and kill; but it's a risk we have to take.

Despite the urgency of the task, I close my eyes and lay there in the half-light, letting myself inhale the mild scent that Tobias left behind. A knock sounds at the door and I release a mumbled groan in response, my head buried in the pillow and my arm draped over the side of the bed. "Rise and shine!" Cara sits on the edge of my bed, but her image does not match her cheerful tone. Her skin is pale, her cheeks flushed while dark puddles encircle her tired eyes.

"Are you sure you're up for it?" I squint up at her, rubbing my hair as I force myself to sit up again, fighting off the tendrils of sleep that are wrapping around my brain. "You look pretty worn out."

"It's now or never." She shrugs, whipping the duvet from over my body and grabbing my hands. My body screams in tired protest as she drags me upright and into the tiny bathroom adjoined to Tobias' room. I lean against the edge of the bath while she busies herself at the sink, filling a cup with cold water that I expect her to drink. Instead, she throws the liquid into my face, drenching me in an instant.

The water drips down my hair and into my shirt, and I stand with a shriek. "I'll get you back for this!" I yell after her as she leaves the room, laughing like a mischievous sprite. My hands shake with cold as I rifle through Tobias' wardrobe, still packed with reams of black clothes from the days of safety. My heart settles on a pair of dark grey skinny jeans that hug the muscles of my legs, and a baggy black t-shirt that could serve just as well as a dress. I tuck the shirt into the jeans and slide my sneakers back onto my feet before I leave the bedroom, heading back through the dark and winding tunnels to the dining hall where our mission group is assembled.

Cara smiles at the damp-curled hair bobbing at my chin as I slide into the seat opposite her, grabbing a thick round of toast from the centre of the table and biting into it. The salty butter slides over my tongue as Zeke begins talking us through the mission, pointing to the map on the table in front of him with the handle of a spoon. "We're going to split into two groups, so that if one of us is caught the others will still be able to carry out the mission. Cara, you're with Harley, Allie, Eoin and Justin. Tris, you're with me, Harley, Shaun and Rose- that's Christina's sister." As her name is mentioned, Rose enters the room. She slides into place beside Cara, her eyes glued to the crumpled map as Zeke finishes explaining the plan. Once it's outlined, we all stand and follow him to the top of the Pit.

On the rainbow-splattered floor of the glass atrium above the pit lies a small pile of weapons and ammunition. The guns and bullets are the last of Dauntless' seemingly endless supply, and there's barely enough to share amongst the group as we ready ourselves for battle. I choose a knife and tuck it into my belt, along with the handgun I brought from the Bureau.

Cara's group is the first to leave, and she gives me a sad and tired smile as they step from the Pire, her gun tucked safely into her belt for the long walk to the city. We stand around for a further ten minutes before we move out, stepping along the train tracks as the sun tickles the horizon.

"What do you remember?" I ask Zeke as we take the lead of our group, trudging along the edge of the track as we head into the city.

He shrugs, running his hand over his buzzed scalp as he forms an answer. "I remember Uriah, of course. I couldn't forget him. And Rose and Stephanie remember Christina, so the bomb didn't make us forget our families. We forgot our friends though- and our enemies. What formed the groups you see today… it's just this feeling that some of us had, that what Marcus and Evelyn were telling us wasn't exactly true. We didn't- and don't- believe what they're telling us about the _Divergent_, whatever they are. In fact, we hope that instead of the dangerous creatures they're making them out to be, the Divergent are here to save us. That's all we have really, is hope."

"Do you remember me? And Christina and Tobias?" Zeke shakes his head, and my heart sinks with thoughts of Tobias. All the friends he had in the world- Amar and Zeke and well, everyone- have forgotten him. And Christina- she left because she thought her family would not remember her, and yet here they are. "You've got hope though, that's good, right?"

"But what if we're wrong? We're just going to be let down." I reach out with my hand and rip his fingers, squeezing them gently before letting them go.

"I promise I'm not going to let that happen."

We step into the Abnegation sector, our black uniforms blending into the shadows of the night as we slink along the edges of the narrow, grey streets. Before we reach the end of the first street, the loud hammering of gunfire fills the air. Shouts drift from somewhere else in the city, the smoky smell of spent bullets curling into my nostrils like mustard gas. My stomach turns, my mouth falling open in panic as I choke out Cara's name. "We have to go find her."

Rose's face is suddenly in front of mine, her harsh features so much like Christina's that for a second the sisters become one. "Get yourself together! Keep going! Remember the plan! Stop trying to be such a hero and focus on the greater problems!" She screams into my face, before turning on her heel and storming back over to Harvey and Shaun. The two other men in our group are really just boys- younger than me at least, but with black tattoos snaking over their dark skin. They hold the guns confidently, their shoulders straight as they duck into doorways and step forwards down the street.

I grudgingly follow, sneaking down dark alleys and jumping over skeletal rotting bodies as we head determinedly away from the gunfire. We don't stop until we emerge in the old Candor sector- where we told our 'troops' to take refugees. Cara's team is nowhere to be seen, doing nothing to settle the nerves in my body as we sneak around the dark edges of the front courtyard of the Merciless Mart.

It's silent- too silent- and I'm about to make my run to the front doors of Candor HQ when I hear the distinct click of a gun behind my head. The bullet slides into the chamber, and I turn to find Rose stood directly behind me. Zeke, Harvey and Shaun stand behind her, grinning as she steadies her hand and prepares to fire. "Divergent scum." She whispers, her lips forming the venomous words as she shifts her aim around my body. I fumble for my gun, but find the chamber completely empty of bullets. It clatters to the floor, useless. Rose grins, her white teeth sharp-looking as they catch the moonlight and she repositions her gun to in front of my face. "Time to die."

TOBIAS

"Why don't you stand up, Tobias?" I want to stay seated, my bottom stuck to the wooden bench beneath me- but people are beginning to turn in my direction. What could happen? She could shoot me, of course. She could turn the hundred-or-so people in this room dead against me or just arrest me and let me rot in prison. The worst she could do is probably give me the truth serum and force me to spill the plans of the so-called Divergent Defectors. The moon glints through one of the glass-less windows in the tall walls, catching my eye as I straighten my back and get to my feet.

The people all around me gasp and turn to me, people on the other side of the room standing to get a look at Evelyn's traitor son. "Mother," I try to keep my voice steady, but my hands are shaking at my side as I draw my gaze away from the slice of moonlight and stare into her eyes. "How nice to see you again."

She smiles, hands grabbing my wrists as she clicks her fingers. The best thing to do is to comply; to obey her wishes. I know this, yet as the man and woman who were sitting on either side of me drag me to the end of the row and down the steps to the centre of the auditorium, I can't help but struggle against their grip.

"How dare you betray me? How dare you have the cheek to leave the parents who raised you just so you could be with that petty little stick of a girl? You're not even supposed to be _alive_."

Her words touch a nerve and I spring forwards, bringing my hand up and sending my fist flying towards her jaw with all the force I can muster. She grabs her face, stumbling backwards until she trips onto the floor. My shadow covers her as she cowers on the floor, and I spit onto her as Marcus did to me on the bus. The hands grab me again, pulling me back as she glares at me, scandalised.

"You're evil!" I shout, rage blowing up in my stomach like a balloon ready to burst. "You _and_ Dad- neither of you know what's good for the world, neither of you care about these people! You just care about yourselves. It makes me sick." I spit again as my heels catch the bottom stair and I trip, falling only for the hands to hold me upright. "I'm glad I left. I thought I could trust you. I thought I managed to change you. Sure- I _changed_ you… but only so you could work together to create a worse evil than you'd already forged and I hate myself for it!"

"You hate yourself?" She pushes herself to her knees, steadying herself on the floor with her fingers outstretched as she looks up at me. A red flower blooms across her jawline, spreading across her cheeks as she struggles to her feet.

"Not as much as I hate you."

"You hope to unearth me with these words? My dear Tobias, your father and I realised that together we are stronger. Together we can rule- and you had the change to join us. Instead, you threw it away in exchange for that little girl with the highly self-destructive hero complex. You must ask yourself, is it really worth it?"

I laugh, certain now of my fate. There's no doubt that I will be imprisoned. She will try and reason with me, and when I refuse she will track down Tris and kill us both. It'd be easy to lie- to try and convince her that I'd rather rule than spend the rest of my life with the girl I love- but I can't. In front of all these people, in the Candor headquarters… Well, it has to be the truth, doesn't it? "Definitely."

She sighs, closing her eyes in defeat as a different pair of hands drags me up the stairs, wrapping my hands with a plastic tie as we walk. The voiceless man guides me through the black and white tiles halls, still marked with evidence of our last battle here. By this point in my life, I'm so used to being arrested that I don't even blink when he cuts through the plastic tie with a pocket knife and throws me into room 382. It's small and unfurnished, with black carpeted floor and white walls. The bubble of frustrated rage fizzes in my throat, desperate to be released.

I can't give them the satisfaction though, so I sit in the middle of the room and close my eyes as the door swings shut and the lock clicks into place. Part of me hopes that I will see Tris soon, so that I can give her the photos that still crinkle in my pocket when I move. The other part hopes that she stays well away, that she won't end up here because if she does, she will die with me.


	8. Chapter 8

TRIS

"Don't." Christina runs forwards, running into Rose's shoulder. The gun clatters to the ground and Christina bends to pick it up, pointing it at her sister. "Don't you dare."

"Christina?" Rose's voice trembles, her eyes wet with tears as she reaches out for her sister. "Where have you been? We missed you so much…"

"Don't try that on with me, Rose." Christina bites her lips as she shakes her head. "You don't remember me. Not really." There's blood smeared on her clothes, dirt making her greasy hair stick up in seventy different directions. Her finger twitches on the trigger, but she doesn't shoot. Not yet. "Your brother is dead, Zeke. Doesn't that count for anything?" Her eyes flicker to him as he stands frozen behind Rose, the crooked grin still etched on his face.

"I don't even have a brother." He scoffs, trying to act easy despite his obvious unease. "Why would the death of some random Divergent kid bother me?"

Vomit rises in my throat, acid and burning as I'm filled with pure, unadultered hatred for the person I thought I could trust. "That'll be all." The soft voice sends chills up my spine and I turn around, dread making my hairs stick up on end. Christina lowers the gun, her lips forming a pout as we face her. Evelyn.

"Tris. How nice to see you again. And Christina! This is a surprise. Your sister here told me you were away." Christina bristles, her old Candor self shining through her stony exterior as she steps towards Evelyn.

"I came back to help my friends. People I care about, not that you'd know."

Evelyn cocks her head to one side, her thin lips forming a maleficent smile as she delivers her fatal blow. "If you care about them so much, why did you leave in the first place?"

"I thought that being on my own would be easy, but now I understand why it's not. Now I understand why you're so bitter." She spits, taking another step forwards. Zeke tails her, taking two steps for every one she takes.

The sky overhead glows with moonlight, grey clouds creeping across the star-studded blanket like ink in a puddle of water. Evelyn smirks and clicks her fingers, and in a flash there's a pair of muscly arms wrapped around my waist. They pin my arms to my side, restricting my movement like thick rope.

I scream, kicking out at whoever has hold of me- until they hit me in the side of the head with the butt of a gun. The darkness becomes more intense as I slump against the person, my legs crumpling beneath me as my knees hit the floor. Relying on the darkness for cover, I fumble on the floor until I find Christina's fallen gun, and I tuck it into my shirt while the person standing over me struggles to regain their grip. The metal is cold against my bare skin, a trail of goose bumps rising over my stomach as the hands drag me upright once more.

"Take them inside. I think that perhaps we have a friend of theirs." Who does she mean? Cara or Tobias?

My head pounds as we march forwards, my feet dragging up the front steps of the Merciless Mart. We walk into the black and white tiled entrance hall and the harsh electric lights flicker on, revealing the still-smashed tiles lining the walls and the blood splatters that remain on the floor. My knees weaken as I notice the black bundle lying limp and pale a few metres away. Her eyes are open, staring straight at the ceiling while her blood-soaked hair trails over the cold floor. There's a tiny red circle on her forehead, blood streaked down her face in shining lines. Christina screams from a million miles away, but I feel like I am drowning as I gasp for a breath of air that is not tainted with the stench of death. Cara.

My whole body is numb as they drag us into an elevator and up three floors, pushing us down a short corridor and into separate empty rooms that probably used to be offices. The walls are torturously blank, mocking me as the door slams shut with an echoing thud. I let my knees bend and fall to the floor, touching my forehead into the rough floor as I let out a scream. First Will, shot through the brain with a bullet fired by my hand… and now Cara, his sister, met with the same fate. Her blood is on my hands, I realise as I sob into the prickly black carpet. My heart clenches in my chest as I try and push the image of her cold dead eyes out of my head, but they remain lodged in my skull, angry and accusing. _I'm sorry. I'm so sorry_.

TOBIAS

Someone screams from within the building, but I tighten my fingers on my knees and stay seated. There's probably other Divergent Defectors in his makeshift prison, other trapped souls lying helpless on itchy black carpet and surrounded by four white walls. The sobs continue and I feel my forehead furrow as I strain to block them out. They remind me of her, but I know that my mind is just playing tricks on me. She's not here. She's not.

My ankles ache from sitting cross-legged for so long, so I straighten them out and lie on my back, watching the unshaded bulb on the ceiling as a tiny black spider winds a silken web along the wire. The door swings open and a soldier steps in, his dark skin illuminated by the bare light. He coughs and I sit up, crossing my legs again and watching him as he considers me like a beast might consider his prey. Sticking with my rule about compliance, I get to my feet. He steps forwards and clicks a set of metal handcuffs over my outstretched wrists, then takes hold of the short length of chain and starts dragging me forwards.

We pass closed doors and I imagine that behind one of these is the screaming voice, the tortured soul. I want to hammer on the wood until they respond, then break down the door and hold them in my arms until they don't feel so sad, but the silence only sends shivers of foreboding trembling through my limbs. What if it's Cara behind that door, or Tris?

The handcuffs cut into my skin as I'm dragged further down a wider corridor, back into the elevators and down to the atrium. A body lies limp against one wall, but I'm turned away and dragged in the opposite direction. Evelyn sits behind a desk in a small room, the window behind her casting faint tones of the coming dawn onto her shoulders. To my satisfaction, she holds an ice-pack to her jaw. To my horror, she's smiling.

"Tobias, dear. Why don't you take a seat?"

"I'd prefer not to." I answer, standing stiffly as the soldier presses something cold and metallic to the small of my back. "Seriously? Do you guys not have anything better to do than stand around pushing guns into people?" It doesn't deter him- only makes him press harder.

Evelyn's eyes appear to flash red, and her eyebrows raise so high I wonder if they're going to vanish into her fringe. "Sit, Tobias. It's not a choice."

Finally I sit, holding my manacled hands awkwardly in my lap. "So?"

"This is your last chance, Tobias." The door to the room opens and then shuts, but the gun is still pressed to my back, so nobody's left. "I don't want to kill you, do you understand? You're my own flesh and blood, but traitors must be treated how the law states."

"What law? Here in this city, you're killing each other like human lives mean nothing to you. You were put here for a reason," My voice cracks, tears pricking at the edges of my eyes as I look away from her piercing stare. "You had a chance to make humanity _better_."

"Humanity?" A loud laugh sounds from behind me and Marcus steps in front of my chair, kneeling in front of my face. Evelyn may be afraid to hurt me, but he isn't. The faint scars on my back tingle as his voice penetrates my mind, and I close my eyes against the horrors his eyes hold. "Please Tobias, look at us when we're talking to you."

I force my eyes open again, and he's standing next to my mother, behind the desk. "We realised that together we're stronger. Together, with my brains and your father's power…" Marcus shoots Evelyn a look, and if looks could kill- it would be the deadly blow.

"Now, I don't know about that…" He interrupts, but Evelyn brushes him off with a flick of her wrist.

"We can control the city. Please son, join us. See where the real winners are."

"There are no winners." I spit, my eyes narrowed against the sight of them. "Only losers, and the people they've killed."

"Be careful what you say, Tobias." Marcus warns, but his eyes glint with pure pleasure. Only he could be enjoying this.

"I'm not going to help you. I know where my loyalties lie."

"But we're your parents." Evelyn adds, like these simple words could sway my loyalty.

"I have no parents."

Evelyn pouts and Marcus' face twists into a ball of rage. "Out!" He shouts, and the soldier grips me by the chain of my handcuffs. He drags me from the office and into the atrium, kicking me onto the tiled floor. Dried blood splatters dot the polished white marble, and I groan as I lift my head to look at the body curled in the corner.

"That's what happens to people who betray them." He whispers next to my ear, dragging me upright once more and shoving me even closer to the body. The stench of blood fills my nostrils as I look down at her grey skin, her cold hands curled at her sides. Her face is smudged with blood, her glassy eyes open and staring at the tall ceiling. A perfectly round bullet hole sits in the middle of her forehead, the edges of her skin seared with the sheer force of the blast. I choke, her name forming on my lips as I struggle to move away from her- from _it_. Cara.


	9. Chapter 9

TRIS

My side throbs as I push myself against the wall, straightening my back against the searing pain in my side. At some point in the last 24 hours, I know I've managed to rip my stitches- the bandage on my side is bright red with blood, and it's starting to seep through to my shirt. I hold no hope of help from Evelyn though, so I grit my teeth against the burning throbs and attempt to wait it out.

By the time the door swings open, the adrenaline rush of the past few days has completely worn off. The soldier doesn't mess around, merely grabbing my shoulders and pulling me to my feet, ignoring my grunts and shrieks of pain as he jostles my sore body. As we're walking- or stumbling, in my case- I find the effort to turn around and look him in the eye. Zeke.

In his face I see the mischievous grin of Uriah, the love that the brothers once shared. Zeke's sheer denial of his familial bond stings more than the cool of his gun pressed against my shoulder, burns greater than the re-opened wound in my side.

We walk into the atrium, and I'm happy to see that Cara's body has been moved. To where, I don't know- but at least I don't have to look at her again. It sounds bitter as I think it, to want rid of my friend so dearly. Where is she now? Rotting in the streets with the others?

My stomach rolls as Zeke pushes me into a small office, containing just a desk and two chairs- and Marcus. I fight the urge to heave, focussing on the weight of the gun still tucked into my shirt. The cool circle of metal that forms the end of the gun is still pushed against my shoulders as I sway on my feet. Marcus steps around the desk with concern etched on his face, but I'm done with his falsities. "Please, sit down."

"No." I murmur through gritted teeth, now fairly sure that the stitches in my side are no more. The room spins around me like a carousel as I lean into the wall, taking deep breathes and begging for a bearing. Just stop spinning. Let me get through this.

"Please, Beatrice. Tobias would not want you to hurt yourself like this."

"How would you know what Tobias wants?" My knees collide with the floor with a painful bang. How did I get down here?

Marcus' voice cracks when he next speaks. "He's my son." _Wow, he's a good actor_. I _almost_ laugh at the sarcasm my conscience expresses. _Bravo, Tris_.

"You sicken me. He may be your son, but you're definitely not his father."

I let my head drop to my chest as I wait for his response, breathing deeply through my nose while I wait for this _damn room to stop spinning. _Marcus sighs and the door swings open. A cold hand presses to my shoulder and I shiver at the touch, the gun burning against my stomach as though to remind me of its presence.

The handle of the gun is soaked with blood when I withdraw it from my shirt, and the sticky red liquid coats my hands as I spin onto my back, pointing the gun up at Evelyn. She grins, raising her hands in mock surrender as I close my eyes and squeeze down on the trigger, my heart pounding in my ears while I wait for the blast.

But instead of jolting me backwards against the floor and sending Evelyn's body falling bloody and limp, the gun clicks in my hands. Empty. I click the trigger again, but Evelyn is upon me. My head hits the tile, and the brief relief from consciousness is a heavenly reprieve- but then in too little time my eyes are open, and the devil-woman stands astride my legs.

She steps over me, stalking towards the desk in heavy boots. Zeke bends down to get me to my feet, but before he does so he manages to kick me in the side. I can tell by the low chuckle that he meant to. The room continues to spin as they shove me into the stiff-backed wooden chair, Zeke holding me upright against the whirling room. "Please. Just stop." I sob now, tears trickling from the corner of my eye and trailing down my cheek. I just want it to stop.

"Grow up." Evelyn slaps me across the face and the gun falls from my sticky hand, clattering to the tiled floor. I unclench and clench my fist, then jump up and swipe for her bruised chin with my blood-stained hand. Instead of scratching her cheek, I find myself once more crouched on the floor, my head pressed against the cold tile.

"Take her back to her room; she's of no use to us. Perhaps her friend will prove better in giving us information. Perhaps the use of force is in order."

A sick feeling fills my stomach and rises in my throat, acid that I try and choke down. I gasp against the pain and dizziness, begging. "Please."

"Evelyn- just let her go." Marcus steps up to her and murmurs low words into her ear. I catch phrases like "Andrew Prior" and "little friends have been caught", and they steal away what little hope I'd managed to retain.

"Please." I whisper again, not really seeing the room anymore. The black and white tiles morph into the black granite floor of the pit, the desk mutating into the cold and slippery railings guarding the chasm. The sound and smell of the cold running water takes over my senses, and suddenly Peter and Al and Drew are dangling me over the edge. I scream, and hands grab my shoulders, shaking me back to reality.

It's Marcus, lifting me to my feet and guiding me from the room. I stumble back into the elevator, leaning against the shining black walls as we zoom upwards. "Why?"

"Because as much as I hate you for what you've done to my son, and however much of a little _bitch_ you're being about the whole thing, you're Andrew's daughter. I owe him this one thing- you won't get a second chance again."

It doesn't fit together, but we've reached the third floor and my head is pounding too much to form any kind of coherent thought as he guides me back to my room and pushes me inside. He gives me a look as I lie crumpled on the carpeted floor, then ducks back into the corridor. He's back in an instant, sliding a red plastic bucket into the corner of my room before he shuts the door.

I try and take deep, calming breathes as I stare across at the wall. My side is in two, the open wound oozing with blood beneath the already sodden bandages. Christina is just the other side of this pale expanse of brick, but there is no way I can be with her. Firstly, Marcus has probably already taken her down to Evelyn for questioning. Secondly, even if she could hear me screaming she would not be able to help. My stomach growls with hunger as I struggle to roll onto my back, my chest heavy with sadness.

Where is Tobias in all of this? Have they already caught him? Is he dead or somewhere in these cells? Did the gangs in the streets track him down and shoot him dead, leaving him to rot in one of those streets with the others? I let out a groan as I finally flip myself over, straightening out against the ground. What if Tobias has done as they say, and is working for them now? What if they've got him with some memory serum, and he doesn't even remember who I am anymore?

No. I can't afford to think like this. He's alive, and he's out there somewhere. Sooner or later, he'll figure out where I am and come rescue me. I know he will.

TOBIAS

The black carpet prickles my forehead as I press myself into the floor, desperate to erase all images of Cara's cold, dead eyes from my memory. She's still alive. It's all a lie. She's alive, she has to be.

I hear Marcus' voice in the corridor outside my room, mumbling quietly to somebody out there. Another prisoner, a guard? Who knows?

Perhaps Evelyn is back for another go. Perhaps this is it, the end. Maybe they've decided that I'm of no use, that they don't need to keep me here after all and they're just going to slaughter me right here, right now.

There's a little voice in my head that's desperate for that release, clawing for the easy way out. But nothing in life is fair, and nothing I will ever face will be easy. The photos crinkle in my pocket as I breathe, and that simple quiet sound is the one that keeps me going. I have to see her again. Beatrice.

But what if she is already dead? My stomach groans and gurgles against the carpet, a pain starting low in my gut from the lack of food. I haven't eaten since the peaches at the Prior house, and the half-can of sickly-sweet fruit didn't keep me full for long. A scream escapes me as I bite down on the edge of my hoody, frustration and boredom clawing at the insides of my skull.

With shaking hands, I draw the crumpled photographs from my pocket and hold them in front of my face. The harsh light of the uncovered bulb overhead distorts the colours and changes the images, but the photographs are unmistakably _her_. She smiles up at me from the paper, and Caleb with his messy crop of dark hair does the same. Even the images of Andrew and Natalie warm my heart, images of a happy family reminding me that there is- or used to be- some good in this world.

The thought sends a chill through my body, and it settles in my stomach like a block of ice. The people from the Bureau are surely all dead by now, sent to their deaths by my command. Their blood is on my hands- not just the nameless men and women but Matthew and now Cara too.

My stomach heaves and I curl against the urge to vomit, for there is nothing to throw up. Instead I tuck the pictures back into my pockets, my hands shaking as I curl against the floor once more. _It's all my fault. Please. It's all my fault._

The door clicks open and something bounces across the carpet before the door is slammed shut again. I don't dare to look as I reach out with my hand, clawing on the carpet for whatever meagre gift has been bestowed upon me. Finally my fingers close around a small bread roll. It's crusty on the outside and dry in the middle, tough and stale like it's a few days old.

I bite into it regardless, forcing the dry lumps of bread down my sore and swollen throat. It takes until I'm halfway through the roll for my old Abnegation habits to kick in, and thoughts for the other prisoners take over my mind. Do they have food too? I haven't heard off them in a while- the screaming stopped a few hours ago and since then… nothing.

My knees click as I push myself upright, walking over to the door and pressing my hand tentatively against the handle. _Please_, I will it to open- and to my surprise it yields.

The corridor hits me with a blast of cool air and I take the two steps across tiled floor to the other door. I press against it, the handle icy under my touch- and this door too swings open at my command. Silly as it is, the first thought to spring to mind is how _stupid_ someone must have been to just leave them open, but upon looking at the curled figure on the simple floor, I realise why.

She's curled in a ball, moaning in pain as beads of sweat drip down her forehead. A bread roll lies untouched next to her face, which is contorted in agony. Her arms clutch her side, her fingers and pale, perfect skin stained red with blood. My voice is a gasp when it escapes my lips, my lungs contracting in shock as I mutter her name. "Tris."


	10. Chapter 10

TOBIAS

I stroke her burning forehead and her eyes flicker open, but I know she can barely see me through her feverish haze. No, Tris. My beautiful Tris. I touch her side, and my hand comes away marked with blood. It stands out with stark contrast against the white paint as I wipe it first on the wall, and then on my trousers. Her shallow breaths tickle my chin as I lean in close to her, her name tickling my lips as I gently exhale.

"Beatrice."

She squints, her eyes unable to focus on my face. "No, Tobias. You have to go. Marcus… Evelyn…"

"Shh, shh." I whisper, leaning still closer to her and planting a soft kiss on her flaming skin. "It's okay, it's okay. I'm here, I'm really here."

"It's not okay. You have to go." She insists, pushing at my chest with her hand. The force behind it is barely there, and I know we don't have the time to argue like this.

"Please. You have to get up."

"I can't." She whispers, and her voice sounds like it's been drawn past a throat of sandpaper. Her lips are dry and cracked; her hair damp with sweat.

She whimpers as I tuck my arms under her body, and her clammy hands find my neck as I lift her into the air. In an effort to keep them there, the winds her fingers together- but then they begin to ache and she takes them down, curling them into her body. "Christina." She whispers, delirious.

I step into the corridor, ready to run, but her eyes snap open and soon she's staring at me, completely away. "Christina."

"She's here?"

"Next door."

I swing around, clutching Tris tight to my chest as I kick out, my foot slamming into the white wood. It splinters under the force and swings inwards, but the plain room is dark and empty. "There's nobody here, Tris." Her head lolls back against my arm and I shake her gently, but she refuses to stir.

_Quickly_, I think, swinging around in the empty room and stepping into the corridor. The white lights overhead cast harsh shadows on the walls as I step past my door and turn the corner into the main hallway. My eyes are focussed on Tris' face, so I don't see the shadow on the floor until it's too late. She stands at the elevator, her hands on her hips. A gun twirls in her fingers, a menacing grin on her lips.

"Tobias. Leaving so soon?" She cocks the gun and points it in my direction. No. It can't end here.

Tris gasps for breath in my aching arms, her hands trembling on top of her chest. "It's okay. It's okay." I murmur softly close to her face, rubbing her shoulder softly. She lets out a small yelp of pain as I shift my hold on her, pulling her closer to my body. I can't let her die.

A tear manifests itself in the corner of my eye and I try and blink it away, but it runs down my cheek in a desperate race for freedom as I look up to face her.

"Oh dear. First your friend; and now your girlfriend too. You can't seem to keep people alive for very long, can you?" She takes a step forwards, prowling down the corridor with her fingernails flashing like talons. "Whatever shall we do?"

I steel my gaze against her as I find her unforgiving stare, wiping the fallen tear on my shoulder as I find the only solution in my immediate grasp. There's no time to take her across the city, to find a car and get back to the Bureau. Her forehead beads with sweat, her chest rising and falling in sharp breaths. She has hours left at most, the evidence of infection like a luminous clock counting down the remainder of her time. "Help me." I croak, another tear following the track of the other down my cheek. It drips onto Tris' face, splashing onto her red cheek.

"What's in it for me?" Evelyn smiles, taking the final step towards me. She presses the gun playfully to Tris' forehead, imitating the blast of the bullet. "It'd be so easy, to end all this. To take out our little trouble maker and take over the world with no repercussions or interruptions…"

"I'll…" I shake my head, the dead weight of Tris' body weighing down my arms. I fall to my knees, cradling her in my lap as my knees hit the floor. "I'll do whatever you say. Save her, and I'll do anything you want."

She smiles now, the twinkle in her eyes only telling me that she's won. "Anything?"

I nod, stroking Tris' burning cheek. My shirt is damp at the front with her blood, my whole body trembling as I sign my life away. "Anything."

She lies limp on the low bed, installed by Marcus in the same cell I just helped her escape. The blood-stained handprints still mark the wall, but the previously empty room now seems crowded with furniture. A fold-out cot is pushed against the wall, an antibiotic drip dangling from a long metal pole on wheels pushed into the corner. Her chest rises and falls softly, her pale features only highlighted by her rosy red cheeks.

Evelyn leans against the doorframe, her arms crossed over her chest. She smiles as she twists the gun around her fingers, and then tucks it into the belt of her skirt. "Now, your first errand…"

"No." I say, turning my head away from her to focus on Tris' sleeping form. Her hand is cold beneath my grasp, the skin around her eyes dark with exhaustion. "Not until she's better."

Evelyn sighs, sensing a lost battle. "Fine," she hisses, stalking into the corridor and leaning only her head into the room. "Have it your way."

The door shuts with a slam, the lock clicking closed with a silent finality. For now, I'm a prisoner. Of course, I'll always be a prisoner now. To her.

I stop thinking about myself, turning my attention only to Tris. Her eyelids flutter softly as images of dreams flicker beneath them, her tiny hand trembling slightly under my grip. "Hey you. I… I need you to get better, real soon." My voice is a whisper, barely audible above the silence. The wound- red and infected- springs to mind. She can fight it off. I know she can. "I've done something stupid, Tris. You'll be really angry when you find out, but you'll see. I just hope you understand. When you're all better I'll find a way out, but for now…" I close my eyes against the thought, exhaling deeply as I shift on my knees. "I won't be here all the time, okay? But I'll be here as much as I can. I'll make sure of it- and when you're better, I'll get you out of here, even if I can't come with you."

The photos crinkle as I pull them from my pocket, pressing them against the small pile of folded clothes on the floor. Caleb's smiling face looks up at me from the top of the pile, his tousled black hair frozen forever in the printed paper. "Tobias…" Tris murmurs from the bed, her eyes flickering open.

"Hey there, sleepyhead." I reply, stroking her forehead gently with the backs of my fingers.

"What did you do?" She croaks, her eyes struggling to focus on my face.

"Nothing, don't worry. Just sleep."

I expect her to argue, but she twitches her head in a quick nod and closes her eyes again. When I'm certain she's asleep, I push myself to my feet and turn back towards the door. It swings open as I reach it, Marcus's face appearing from behind the tiny peephole in the wooden surface. His skin is grey against the white wall behind him, his mouth set in a stern, straight line. "Come on then, _son_. We've got work to do."


	11. Chapter 11

TRIS

"Tobias." My mouth is dry, my throat like sandpaper as I push myself upright. I scream through gritted teeth as my side pulls painfully, and fall back against the pillow with an exasperated sigh. There's a bloody handprint on the wall opposite the bed in this tiny room, which is really barely big enough for the fold-out bed I lie upon. A clear plastic tube is draped from a bag hanging from a pole over my head, connected to a thin needle stuck into my hand. I push the blanket back from my bare body, hissing as the cold air prickles my skin, and gingerly push at the fresh bandages on my side. The white cloth is no longer soaked with red, and the skin beneath feels freshly stitched. It hurts, but it's better than before- instead of screaming with burning agony, it throbs softly like a fresh bruise.

The room spins around me as I press my head into my pillow, frustration already grinding at my nerves. I need to be up and about, but every time I lift my head off the bed I find myself drowning in a wave of dizziness. Where is Tobias? My stomach turns as I tilt my head to look sideways, examining the smudged handprint marking the wall. I catch sight of a bundle of black clothes out of the corner of my eye, folded on the floor with a pile of folded and crumpled paper on top of them.

My hand shakes as I reach out, straining to take hold of the grey photographs. When my fumbling fingers finally find the pile, I'm overcome with a sense of grief and longing that I can't comprehend. Caleb's smiling face shines out from the paper, his grey clothes like any others in the black-and-white image of his last school photograph. Tousled black hair hangs in front of his wide eyes, the round-cheeked face showing no hint of the traitorous behaviour soon to follow.

I move his picture to the back of the small pile, shuffling past a grainy image of me and Caleb playing in the snow and a blurred picture of the two of us sharing our toys in the living room. My eyes finally fall upon the most crumpled of all the images, tear-stained and blackened at the edges. The ink is smudges in parts, but in others the matte paper glistens with nostalgia.

My parents sit at an Abnegation kitchen table, their hands entwined on the surface and smiles marking their young faces. Friends crowd around them, Marcus and Evelyn on one side and other Abnegation members I've never met hovering on the other. Even here, Evelyn's smile is forced and tired, Marcus' face creased with lines of stress and age.

These images must be a gift from Tobias, forbidden snapshots from my childhood. I know these are not allowed, but I also knew about the camera my parents kept hidden in their room. They'd sneak it out occasionally and take some pictures, and my mother would develop the film on special paper using some orange juice she'd saved from our breakfast quota. The fact that she kept them, after all this time, and that their integrity was protected from the hot flames of our living room fireplace warms my heart.

I feel the heavy pull of sleep drawing at my eyelids as I try and absorb as much of these photographs as I can. With the destruction of the hard drive, I'd thought that all images of my parents were lost forever- but I'd forgotten about these. This legacy left by my mother has become my most valuable possession, and yet it can be taken away so quickly, so easily.

My eyes flutter closed and I force them open. I have to stay awake, I have to…

They drift closed again and my head sinks further into the stiff pillow, and I know there's no chance of them opening any time soon. My hand falls from my chest, the photographs floating to the floor like charred confetti. I fight to catch them as I sink through the bed, falling into the blackness of the roaring chasm before I land at the bottom of the pit, the glass floor of the spire shining like a tiny dot of torchlight far above my head. The view is peaceful and silent, until the harsh blast of a gun shatters the rainbow glass. It rains down on me in a shower of dried paint and splatters of blood, corpses falling from the room above and hitting the floor around me like limp rag dolls. I gasp, and I'm drowning in the stench of death, unable to surface as Will's body falls from the roof, landing next to my head. The next to fall is Cara, her glassy eyes facing me on my right. Then Matthew and Christina and Uriah and Zeke all come tumbling down, landing in the sea of bodies with soft flumps, like bricks falling onto a bed of pillows.

The final body to fall is Tobias, his empty eyes blank and staring as they get closer and closer. His floppy body falls directly on top of me, his bloody hair dangling into my forehead as I'm frozen under his dead weight. I scream, but the air is crushed from my lungs as I fight to escape. My fingers claw at the soft flesh around me, but they only sink into the rotting bodies. The stench of death and decay sills my nostrils, burning the hairs as I'm forced to stare up into Tobias' glazed eyes. I take one final gasp as my vision blackens at the edges, dimming what little of the room I can see. Then, against the white light of the spire above, I see the muscles in Tobias' sagging face move, twisting into a bloody grin.

TOBIAS

I stand before Evelyn, hatred radiating out from my very centre as she points to Christina. The girl's hair is greasy and frazzled, and her dirt-smeared face is red and swollen with bruises. On top of it all, her eyes are barely open, the skin around them tear-stained and traced with salty tracks. Blood crusts her cut lips, her very resolve crumbling as she looks at me through her black eyelashes. "Traitor," The words form on her lips, a whisper at first which rises to a shout as she repeats it again and again, pounding the words into my skull.

Evelyn clicks her fingers and Rose steps forwards from the edge of the room, bringing her hand up and slapping Christina across the face. Her own sister...

When I look at Christina, I see only the Candor transfer from the group of initiates; the mouthy teenager with too much to say, the girl who stuck up for her friends and refused to fight. I see the girl who hung herself over the chasm to prove her courage, to defend her friends and her honour. As I think of her, I can't bring myself to do that Evelyn is asking of me… but I have to.

Because Evelyn took pity on me. She let Tris live, despite her mere existence serving as a grand hindrance to her plans. I turn on Christina, my knuckles encased in four connected copper rings. My fingers crack as I flex them and curl them into a fist- and send them flying at Christina's stomach.

She bends over on the chair with a scream, and each collision thereafter is met with a grunt of pain. I apologise as I hit her again and again, guilt eating at my soul every time she refuses to answer one of Evelyn's questions. "Where are your cohorts?" Evelyn demands, and Christina screams "NO!" at the top of her lungs, her refusal like an explosion in the tiny room. My fist finds her stomach, and Evelyn's next question comes at her like a bullet. "Where are the others? From the Bureau?"

"I don't know!" Christina sobs, her cheeks wet once more with tears she can't hold back. Her body curls as she tries to tuck her knees into her chest to protect herself, and I send another punch into her ribs. "Please! Believe me."

Evelyn shakes her head, an evil grin manifesting on her lips. "Where are they hiding?"

"I don't know!" She shouts, her eyes snapping open to glare first at me, then at Evelyn. "You killed her. You killed the only one who could tell you, don't you understand? You're so trigger happy you don't realise how important each and every single human life is! And now she's gone, and you've lost, and you can't take it so you're making me bear the pain." Her head sags, her hair falling forwards over her face. "I've taken worse beatings." She mumbles, and I know her arms ache with the memory of the chasm.

"Please." I turn to Evelyn now, my hand aching. The copper band slides from my sore knuckles and falls to the floor, my resolve defeated. "Let her go."

Evelyn bites her lip. I know she doesn't want to let us win, but at the same time she recognises her loss. It's like Christina's words have actually touched her, like the realisation that her most valuable asset is gone and dead has finally hit her. Her head falls forwards and she sighs, glancing at me before she leaves the room. "Fine. Untie her and take her up to her cell, then return to yours. No funny business; or your precious Beatrice…" She lifts a finger, drawing it across her neck like an executioners guide. "Dead."

The final word is a whisper more sinister than any others. I work quickly, my fingers fumbling at the ropes that are holding Christina's limbs to the chair. "I'm so sorry." My voice is low, my hands working quickly on the frayed rope. "I don't want to be doing this… It's not my choice."

Christina shakes her head, and when I find her eyes they're cold and uncaring. "You're just doing your job, I know. You hate it, I get it. I can see it in your eyes. But why? Why work for them after all we planned to do to take them down?"

I finish freeing her and help her to her feet, taking her by the waist as we hobble over the elevators. How easy it would be now, to run through the atrium and out through the glass doors, out into the city and the world beyond… but Beatrice stops me. She is the only thing keeping me rooted here, making me stay.

"Tris is sick. She was _dying_. I didn't know what to do. This was the only option."

Christina sucks in a breath and lets out a wince, holding her bruised ribs as the lift shoots upwards. "The only choice, really? Working with them?"

The elevator stops and we step out, walking down the corridor in silence until we reach Tris' room. I push open the door, sticking my head through the gap and watching her pale, sleeping form. "It's done now, okay? I'm going easy on you. Just… act the part, and I can work lightly. Tell lies if you have to, but make them sound true. I don't want to hurt you, but she'll make me. We can escape… I just need to work out how."

Christina pokes her head into Tris' room, and when she emerges her face is dark with a deep hopelessness. "Can we, really?"

A long silence passes between us as I let the door swing to a shut and lean against the wall. "I don't know." I say, turning my head to face Christina. Her face is still swollen, her stance still bent with pain. "I don't know."


	12. Chapter 12

TOBIAS

I kneel at Tris' side, my chin balanced on the edge of the thin mattress like a puppy begging for her to wake up. When I'd dropped Christina back in her cell, I came back to see Tris. I noticed the photographs lying strewn on the carpet beside her hand and I knew she'd been awake; and it hurt now that I was here and she was not.

She takes in a shuddering breath and her eyelids flicker, her chest heaving as she struggles to wake. "Tris." I whisper into her ear, calling to her. "It's me."

A gasp, and then her eyes open, wide and scared. She sits up, wincing against the pain, and shifts to the wall. "No." She mutters, pushing her head into the painted white surface. "No."

"Tris?" I move from the floor, perching on the edge of the bed as she glazes at me with wide and petrified eyes. _What's going on?_

"Please." She's whimpering now, closing her eyes to block me out. I reach out to take her hand but it's like an electric shock passes between us, for when our skin collides she whips herself away from my grip.

"Hey, hey. What's wrong?" I ask softly, but she shrieks and curls herself against the wall. "Okay." My heart clenches inside my chest as I look at the clear bag above her head, now empty. "Here, let me help." It's like coaxing a small animal out from the undergrowth as I lean into her, putting out my palm. "Give me your hand." Her eyes are wide with fear, her whole body shaking, but I can tell she knows I won't leave until she obeys.

My fingers are shaking as her skin touches mine, her hand lightly pressed into my palm. A deep breath makes my lungs ache as I grip the thin needle between two fingers, gently sliding it from her vein. She breathes out at the same time as I do, and looks up at me with dark eyes.

"Why don't you go back to sleep?" I suggest, bringing my hand up to tuck a stray strand of hair behind her ear. "It'll make you feel better, I promise." She nods, shuffling away from the wall with a wince as the stitches in her side pull beneath the bandage. "You want to get dressed?"

She looks down, finding herself almost completely naked beneath the thin blanket she clutches to her chest. "Yeah," her voice is a croak, her arms thin and trembling as she reaches out for her shirt. I pass it to her, helping her guide it over her head. My fingers brush over the ugly scar on her shoulder from the bullet wound a few months ago and she shivers like she barely knows me.

"I'm going to go now." I say, standing up to let her lie back down. She nods, but the fear in her eyes remains. The entirety of my insides clench and crumple as I turn my back on her, not daring to look into her pained face again as I swing the door shut behind me.

The cool air of the corridor hits my face, waking me from my world of wonder into a sudden universe of knowing. _Evelyn_.

TRIS

Tobias leaves, and I bury my face in the pillow. It smells like sweat and tears, stinking of fever. My whole body is shaking, trembling with fear as I try and extinguish the thoughts of him from my mind.

Beneath the blood and the morphed and mutated features he looked so hurt, but he could not understand. He did not see the monster he has become.

The blanket itches my face as I draw it over my eyes, relying on the darkness to hide from me Tobias' twisted face. He doesn't understand why I couldn't let him touch me, why he couldn't look at me.

Now, alone in the darkness, the idea seems almost silly. But then, when his face twisted first to that of Marcus and then changed to Evelyn and Jeanine and even Peter and Al and Drew… The faces swim back to me in the dark, of the dead and the evil. Now, the hurt that I could see under the disguises manifests itself in my brain, haunting me as I beg for sleep to come.

But now, I am more awake than I have ever been. My mind is working furiously to decipher the code, to figure out if the horrors were a result of a simulation, or merely the product of my fever-soaked consciousness.

Instead of sleeping, I get to my feet and start pacing the small room. Three steps across the rough carpet and three steps back, my bare legs rubbing against each other with each movement. I do this in the hope that it will tire me out, but with every inch I move across the room I only find myself more and more awake. Finally, my side pulling too much to continue and the fear of ripping my stitches again ever present in my mind, I sit down on the edge of the bed. The air seems to cool now that I'm not working, and it tickles the hairs on my legs, trailing over my bare feet.

My head snaps downwards, my eyes threatening to burst from my skull as they focus on the black floor beneath my feet. A light glows under my skin, white and bright on the dark carpet. Suddenly the light morphs, turning into smoky tendrils as I watch on. I try to move, to tuck my toes under the blanket and away from harm but my feet are stuck to the floor, my legs paralysed and aching as I try to move them away.

The white light warms beneath my skin and I take a deep breath, trying to keep calm. It's a simulation. It has to be. As the light gets warmer, the colour changes, first from white to yellow and then to orange and eventually to red and back to white. It's as hot as fire, the square beneath me glowing like embers atop the charcoal floor.

I scream out as my flesh bubbles, blisters popping up on my skin then bursting and drenching me in sickly green acid. No. It's real. It has to be real. No simulation could hurt this much, no, no, no.

The door swings open and the blinding light of the corridor outside hits me, sizzling my eyes. A yelp escapes me as a figure walks in, tall and loping. They step forwards, their silhouette slowly colouring to become an apparition of my worst nightmare. The face shimmers, changing first from Zeke to Peter and then to Drew, flickering past Tobias and Marcus and Cara's sunken face with dark and glassy eyes, finally settling on an appearance I decide is real. She kneels on the floor, smiling up at me with her chin resting on her hand. I gulp, closing my eyes and opening them again but only finding her there, smiling the same horrid grin.

"Hello, Tris." She puts her hand on my knee and the skin beneath bursts into flames. I cry out, biting back the tears as I struggle to match her words, to imagine a witty retort and cast hatred back in her direction like a venomous tennis match.

When my voice escapes, hoarse and quiet and infected with flecks of fear, it's nothing more than a croak. "Evelyn."


	13. Chapter 13

TRIS

"What did you do?" I hiss through the searing pain somehow gluing my feet to the floor. "What are you doing to me?"

Evelyn smiles, a mocking glint in her eye. "My dear, I have done nothing. It is your beloved Tobias who is the _big bad wolf_ in this situation."

She rocks on her feet, spinning on her heel and taking wide strides around the room. Her hands stroke the dried blood on the wall, and she rubs her fingers as she draws them away. Finally, she turns to me again. I expect her to offer me an explanation, but instead her expression is stony and closed.

"Farewell, Beatrice." Her voice is quiet, echoing tones of my mother's as it fades out to nothing. Even as I watch, the image of Evelyn shimmers and dissolves into the darkness, her entire body becoming transparent and appearing to diffuse through the room.

The burning stops, the glowing floor dimming back to black. Finally the room is plunged into a cold darkness, and once more I am lying down. My limbs are frozen at my sides, my fingers curled under my hands. I'm asleep but awake, my eyes glued shut against my efforts to open them and move.

Something rustles in the room, the light flicking on but barely penetrating my mind. A low voice coughs, the sound of fabric rubbing against plastic filling the room as someone steps across the rough carpet. The footsteps stop beside my head, breathing filling my ears as someone leans over me, their face close to mine. I panic but my body doesn't react, refusing to protest as rubbery hands grip my arm, lifting my hand over my stomach and rubbing the skin until it turns sore.

The hands press something cold and metallic against hand, and I feel the stabbing pain as they slide the needle under my skin. My jaw clenches automatically and releases as the owner of the hands steps back, wiping their gloves against their trousers.

A click signifies the turning off of the light, the door opening and closing and then locking as the person leaves. The needle itches in my hand as something cold flows into my veins, but I can't move my arm or remove the prong from my skin.

I try not to panic, hoping that all of this is just a dream- but my thoughts do not dim and change, and my mind does not numb and my entire body aches with a tiredness that's too real, but I still cannot move. Hours pass before the door creaks open again, the light flicking on. A cough, and then a pair of warm hands find my arm and gently shake my body. "Tris. Hey, wake up. You have to eat."

"No." My eyes snap open, and he's there. The monster: Tobias.

"Tris, please." His eyes turn down at the edges, his mouth marked with lines of hurt. "If you don't want to eat, please at least drink. Water, orange juice; anything, please." I look at his hands as he coughs again, his face twisting in pain as his chest explodes.

He looks so hurt that I finally nod, giving in and letting him push a cup of lukewarm water into my hand. As I drink, his face ripples and warps. It changes, twisting from his face first into Marcus' and then Zeke's. I shy away from him, curling against the hands hurt me until I finally remember the prickling in my hand.

I throw the glass away, spilling water over the floor. "Tris!" Tobias shouts, his face no longer warping and rippling. "You need to drink that, or you'll get sick." His eyes are dark and tired, his shoulders sagging with exhaustion. He really wants me too, he does, but I close my eyes against his pleading stare and bury my face in the thin and itchy throw.

"Tobias. I can't."

"You can't what?" His hand finds my shoulder but I shake it off, and when I lift my head to look at him my face is streaked with tears. They drip onto my chest and I sniff back a sob.

"I can't do this. What I see when I look at you… it scares me."

"What is it? What can you see?" I can't look at him when I answer, so I stare at the bloody mark on the wall. It's darker now, brown and crusted on the white paint.

I shake my head, another tear breaking free from my eye and rolling down my cheek. He wipes it away and I close my eyes against his touch, thinking back to how it used to be.

"Something's not right. It's not _you_."

He sits back on his knees, avoiding the damp patch on the carpet where I spilt my drink. "What do you mean?"

I bite my lips, but the words spill forth regardless. "When I look at you… For a minute, it's you. Then you change, sometimes into Marcus but sometimes into Zeke or Peter or Drew…" My voice cracks in my throat and I close my eyes, absorbing the cool darkness as he gets to his feet and slides onto the bed.

He wraps his arm around my shoulders as I sit with my knees drawn to my chest, and pulls me into his body. "Then don't look." His voice is thick with hurt, and I want to look at him, to face my fears until I can mend the canyon between our hearts. I try, but I can't.

Instead, I lean my head into his shoulder. He sighs, rubbing his hand against my arm as I breathe against him. "I miss you." I whisper, my heart feeling crushed within my chest.

"But I'm right here." He replies, his voice softs against the side of my head as his lips move against my hair.

I push him playfully and the needle in my hand pulls, the skin prickling around the metal. "What's this for?" The light stings my eyes as I force them to open, my gaze focussed on the clear tube. Every now and then, another drop of liquid falls from the bag above my head. I turn to Tobias, watching his actions as he avoids my gaze.

"It's to make you better. Evelyn said-"

"Evelyn?" I yelp, starting to pull at the needle. It hurts as it shifts under my skin, wiggling inside my vein.

"She _saved_ you…"

"Did you ever even question what this stuff could do to me?" I yell as he grips my arms, holding them to the bed and stopping me from pulling out the IV. "Let me go!"

"Tris, I can't do that. You're too weak- you're still ill!"

I shake my head, pulling my arms from his grip and wrenching the IV from the back of my hand. He looks horrified as I turn to him, my eyes blazing. "She's evil, Tobias! What did you offer her in return? What did you give her in return for my life?" He closes his eyes, pinching he bridge of his nose as he exhales and stands up, walking to the door. I get to my feet, hurrying past him and pressing myself against the wood. My anger bristles the hairs on my arms, making my scalp crawl as I force him to look at me. "What did you do?"

He leans down and kisses me, his lips violently pushing against mine. I scream into his mouth as he pushes me against the door, his hands running over my body. A space opens between us and he takes a breath, his cheeks red with a hot flush as he runs his hands through his short, dark hair.

"Myself." He sighs, his hand finding the handle of the door. I flatten my hair, straightening my shoulders as I step across the room again, trying to push myself once more between Tobias and the exit. His body is rippling again in the air, my head spinning as I push myself against the wall. "I gave her myself, Tris." The door creaks as he wrenches it open, slipping into the corridor and slamming the door shut behind me. My eyes refuse to stay focussed, the room whirling as I slide down the wall and onto the floor.

The rough carpet rubs my legs as I push my hands against my face, running them through my filthy hair and wiping away tears that I didn't realise were running quickly down my cheeks. "Why." I murmur, feeling my resolve ebbing as my mouth falls open in the beginning of a grotesque wail. "Tobias."

TOBIAS

I step out of her room, closing her door behind me and stopping in the corridor. The wood is cold as I press my forehead against it, closing my eyes against the screams from inside. It takes everything I have to push myself back from the door and walk away, stepping down the corridor and into Christina's room.

She jumps to her feet the second I open the door, pounding her hands against my chest. I push her back, letting her see my tear-stained cheeks and ruffled hair. "Shut up!" I roar at the far wall, begging Tris to stop screaming. Finally her cries fade out, leaving the two rooms in complete silence but for our breathing.

Christina looks at me with hurt in her eyes, her arms folded over her chest. "What did you do to her?" Her expression is enclosed, guarded.

"I told her the truth." I reply, pulling a pair of handcuffs from my pocket and snapping them onto her waiting hands. "She's refusing to co-operate, so I told her what's at stake if she continues like this. I told her what I've sacrificed to let her have this life… I think she's just frustrated. Scared."

Christina follows me from the room and down the corridor. I think we both stopped fighting a while ago, so I hold open the doors for her and let her take her time as she stumbles along after me, clutching at her sore ribs. "Why are you doing this Tobias?" She asks as we enter the atrium, her tired eyes trailing lazily over the cracked tiles in the floor.

"For Tris, really." I follow her gaze, my eyes not really seeing the destruction of the hall. "I need her to live. Even if she can't be with me, she needs to live. She deserves to live."

Christina closes her eyes, exhaling as we step into Evelyn's interrogation room. Marcus stands inside, and he takes out the spare key for Christina's handcuffs. He unfastens them then puts them away in his pocket. "We trust the pair of you now. There are certain… incentives, which we believe will keep you here. Today you two will have the same job. Head to the old dining hall and join Zeke and the others in their… task."

My stomach turns as we walk in silence, heading down the long tiled corridor to the old dining hall, a room which once held a make-shift infirmary for our friends. Now however, it serves as a mass funeral hall.

Christina stops by the door, her eyes wide in horror. I follow her gaze and find Cara's body, thrown limp and carelessly on a table with a dozen others. The room stinks of death, of twenty bodies hovering on the edge of decay. Zeke and Rose and the others walk amongst the tables, their eyes blank and unseeing as they lay the corpses out on the table. I don't know what they're doing and I don't wait to find out, grabbing Christina's hand and backing quickly from the room.

I throw up as soon as I'm outside, the dry toast I had for breakfast scraping just as much on the way out as it did on the way in. I choke, coughing and spluttering as my empty stomach heaves. Christina vomits next to me, sobbing as she leans against the wall. I read Cara's name on her crumpled lips, her agonised screams reaching me from miles away.

Shaking, I watch as Christina looks wildly around. Her eyes are wide with the fear I feel inside, and she pushes herself away from her wall, almost drunkenly sprinting down the corridor. I follow her to the atrium, watching from the corner as she runs through the glass doors at the front of the building and out into the street.

I can't follow her. Instead, I succumb to the weight of my thoughts and sink to the floor again, my head spinning as I push it into the icy tiles. My mind is full of thoughts of Evelyn, of the twisted fates she could have in store for Cara and the others. _What are you planning?_


	14. Chapter 14

TOBIAS

"What are you doing?" It took hours, but I finally managed to track her down. Evelyn. "Why can't you just let Cara lie in peace?"

She frowns, then smiles. While her eyes are at first dark, an evil glint soon manifests itself in them. "My dear boy, you actually think I'm going to tell you?"

I lash out, punching her in the greenish-blue-tinged bruise on her chin. She falls backwards, landing dazed in the chair. "Tell me. Now."

She shakes her head. "Never."

"Stubborn as ever." I sigh, reaching into my pocket and sliding the brass rings over my knuckles. "Last chance, mother."

Her eyes narrow, her face darkening even further. "Do you really want to know?" She asks, her lips curving into a grin despite the position she found herself in. "Really?"

I pout, cracking my knuckles, and she winces.

"Deoxyribonucleic acid. DNA." I nod, and gradually she continues. "It holds memories. Your little friend _knows_ things that I need to learn. I _need_ to know what she remembers."

"You're mad. She's DEAD."

"You're wrong. She's dead, all right. Her brain, her organs: they no longer work. What you don't see is what her body holds. While it no longer moves, it still exists- and if it exists, it can be used."

"You make me sick." I spit, kicking out at the desk. She winces in the chair, folding her hands in her lap.

"We'll see about that."

TRIS

I stay crouched in the corner for hours. By the time I manage to get to my feet again, my legs are cramped and sore. My head spins when I stand up, and I start to think that perhaps I should not have ripped the IV from my hand. A line of crusted red blood runs from my hand down my forearm, and I start to pick at it until it flakes off, sitting once more on the edge of the bed with my feet tucked under the blanket.

Tiredness hits me like a wave, but I do not want to let it drown me. It does though, dragging me backwards and through the bed into the world of the sleeping, the unconscious world of horror that I have grown to know and hate with all my heart.

I'm back in the Dauntless compound, sprinting through the long and winding tunnels. My chest burns with the effort it takes to keep going, so I know I've been running a while- but where to? And what from?

The loud, squawking noise of birds fills my ears, wings flapping at my head and beaks pecking at my clothes as I run. In the dim blue lights hanging on the walls, I see the black silhouettes of millions of crows as they fly into my back and my head, their wings whipping my face. Talons claw at my clothes and my skin as I scream, running, sprinting, desperate to escape.

I reach the end of the corridor and run into a wider room, harshly lit with white light. The wings stop but the noise persists, and I turn to see the birds sat in the corridor, their head cocked to one side to consider me like a lion would consider his prey. Even as I consider why they're not moving, one bird flies up and towards me. I cower back, but the bird slams against an invisible wall and falls back to the floor.

Something cool brushes my ankles and I look down, fearing the worst. I'm right to fear it, because soon the cold water has crept up my legs, forming an icy pool around my knees. I scream but it only rises faster, ringing my waist as I take deep, gasping breathes. It's like a simulation. _The_ simulation. It's a simulation.

I wade through the room, finding the invisible wall between me and the crows. The water is slowly creeping up my body and my feet fight to leave the ground, but I push my hands against the wall and beg for freedom. _Please_, I think, closing my eyes. _Let me go_.

When I open my eyes, the invisible wall is still there, the crows flapping impatiently on the other side. The water slides up to my chest, my fingers becoming icy against the glass-like surface. I take a gasp of breath, feeling the crushing pressure of the roomful of water behind me as I'm pressed into the doorway. _Please_.

The darkness swallows me up as I close my eyes again, taking a slow gasp of air as the water reaches my neck. My hands find the coldness of the invisible wall as my feet leave the ground. I try not to panic as the water reaches my hair, dampening the strands and sticking them to my shoulders. _It's a simulation. It's not real. I have to escape_.

I focus all of my energy on the invisible wall before me. _Let me go. Let me escape_. When I open my eyes again, the wall is almost opaque. The crows beyond are gone, the shadows no longer flapping against the blue lights; but the water is crawling up my face. I push my face into the air above me, taking one final gasp before it vanishes completely. It soaks the last of my hair as I duck beneath the surface, my palms pushed against the solid wall. _It's not real. It's not real_.

Finally a crack appears in the clouded glass, and I kick against it with my heels. _Let me out!_ It cracks once more and the pressure of the water does the rest, shattering the wall and letting the water flow out into the corridor. My sodden clothes cling to my skin as I take deep breathes of air, hunched on the damp floor. Just a simulation.

My eyes snap open and I look over into my darkened room, sitting straight up in the bed and running my fingers through my hair. I feel a pulling in my hand as I lift my arm, and find another needle slid under my skin. It's secured with a sticking plaster, connected once more to a bag of clear fluid above my head. I half-stand on the bed and squint at the bag, reading the scrawled black handwriting on the sticky-white label. _Antibiotics – Saline - Metus intravenous_.

I shiver, sitting back down and crossing my legs. Antibiotics and saline _sound_ medical and they sound important- but the last two words mean nothing to me. My skin sticks to the dressing as I pull at the edges, peeling the sticky fabric away from the back of my hand, easing the needle out of the vein and letting it fall against the wall.

My legs wobble as I step across the room, pulling on the doorknob and begging for it to open- but it won't budge. "Tobias!" I shout, hammering against the wood. "Four! I need to speak to you!"

No noise sounds from the corridor, no indication that he is anywhere near. I sigh, spinning on the spot and returning to the bed as my stomach grumbles with hunger. My knees are cold as I hug them to my chest, wrapping my fingers around my ankles and putting my head against my legs. Now that I know that none of the fear was real, that it was a simulation- I know that the things I saw when I looked at Tobias were all a lie- I need him.


	15. Chapter 15

TOBIAS

She screams my name from inside her room, but I don't open the door. Instead I sit on the tiled floor in the corridor, my head pressed against the wall as I listen to her cracking voice. I feel terrible for hooking her up to the IV again, but it's her own fault. Evelyn said Tris has been having fever-induced dreams, that this is why she's been screaming so much. I don't believe her, not really, but why should she lie? She knows she has me wrapped around her little finger…

I stand up, my hand finding the doorknob. My fingers close around the metal handle, but I can't bring myself to open the door. I don't want to see the fear in her eyes, see her flinching away from me as I try and touch her. No.

For the first time in days, I turn away and enter my own room, tiredness ebbing at my resolve to stay awake. A folding bed has been set up in here too, a pillow and blanket stacked and folded on the floor. I make the bed, lying down on top of the covers and curling into a ball on my side. The failure of the day grinds at my conscience, all the things I've lost piling up inside me into a mountain of dread and guilt. My eyes drift closed, my fingers curling against the rough fabric below me as I give way to sleep and let myself fall.

But when I wake up, things aren't as I expect. Instead of finding myself in my small, dim room in the prison quarter, I find myself squinting up into harsh white lights. I lie on a table, my arms strapped to the metal at my sides with plastic straps. My throat is dry when I shout out, my voice scraping against my tongue as I groan in frustration. I press my head into the table, closing my eyes tight as the room sways around me. What's going on?

Footsteps tap on the tiles of the sterile room, and I try to relax my muscles. Perhaps I am more likely to discover the truth if they think I can't hear them.

"He's asleep?" Evelyn asks, her cold fingers finding my arm.

"Completely." The voice that answers is rough and strained, but unmistakably Marcus. His tone also tells me that he's smiling. I shiver.

"Are you sure?" She steps closer, and her hair tickles my face as she leans over me. Her hands tap my face and I try to relax and ignore her, despite my racing heart. "Fine." With a sniff she steps back, rustling something on the table beside me.

"Are you confident this will work?" Marcus sounds unsure as he takes hold of my arm with gloved hands.

"Absolutely. We've tested it with some of the others and found optimal results in Zeke with one of the Bureau representatives. I'm not sure how inter-gender sharing will work, but we've got nothing to lose."

My eyes snap open as Evelyn takes Marcus' place, pinching my skin between her fingers. "Let go of me you _bitch_!" I spit out, trying to wiggle free of my bonds. She smiles at my distress, ignoring my protests and pressing a needle against my arm. The pain is sharp as she slides it under my skin, sticking it to my arm with a white papery tape and connecting it to a long tube, which in turn is connected to a clear bag dangling above my head. Suddenly I realise how terrified Tris must be, upstairs in the same situation.

"Don't you worry, _darling_. It'll all be over soon." Evelyn smiles, stroking my hair as Marcus twists a valve at the base of the bag. The liquid flows down the tube, stinging and burning as it flows into my bloodstream.

I scream out in pain, writhing against the icy table. Sobs escape me and I bang my head against the table in my attempt to break free, slamming my skull against the metal until my skin aches and my head pounds with the dizzy beginnings of a concussion. "Let me go!"

My mind becomes foggy, and I can't tell whether it's the result of the serum or my ensuing concussion. As my heart races and my palms become sweaty, I feel myself ebbing. Another voice takes over, poking into all the quiet places in my head and filling it with girlish chatter.

It only takes a few minutes for the bag to completely empty, and I feel my veins bursting with the extra pressure as Evelyn unhooks the tube from the deflated bag, throwing both of them into the bin. "Now, how are you feeling?" She leans close to my face, opening my eyes with her fingers and gazing into them with a torch. "Not dizzy? Lightheaded?"

"Why are you doing this to me?"

"My dear boy- I was going to do this to Christina, but you let her run away! Beatrice is too ill, so it only serves that you are the one to make this noble sacrifice for our cause. You are working for us, after all. Now, my earlier question?"

I shake my head, biting my lips as fear builds inside me like a wave. The voices in my head- my own and the girls- shout over one another. It's loud, like there's a crowd in the room instead of just me and Marcus and Evelyn. Marcus steps forwards, but his grin is uneasy as he connects another syringe to my arm. It contains a pale blue serum- a truth serum.

My skin is on fire, prickling with truth serum and whatever other drugs are running through my system as Evelyn tilts the top half of the table until I'm sitting upright. I struggle against the bonds again, feeling the plastic dig into my wrists as I bite down on my lips, determined to keep them closed. "Now, Tobias. Is there anybody in there with you?"

_Say no. Don't give in._

The voice in my head argues with me, shouting against what my mouth is desperate to utter.

_Please, Tobias. Please don't tell her._

"Cara." Evelyn smiles and the voice in my head turns red and angry and loud.

_Tobias!_

She screams out and I grit my teeth against the pain in my head, the sharp agony spiking through the middle of my brain.

"Tell me. Where are the insurgents hiding?"

I shake my head, blood spurting through my cracked lips as I bite down on them.

_I don't know. I don't know._

"I don't know."

"You must know, Tobias. All her thoughts, all her memories are contained in your head. You _know_."

"We… were going to converge here. I don't know what plans they've orchestrated now that these Headquarters are out of the rankings for a possible base."

Evelyn pouts, and then bites her lips. Her fingers drum methodically on her arm, Marcus shifting awkwardly at her side. "Then what would you say that they would decide to do, now that we have claimed possession of this ground?"

_Don't say it, Tobias._

"They're probably constantly on the move. I don't know. I don't know."

Cara's voice is fading in my head, and the pain of losing her is fresh in my heart- but the voice doesn't completely go. She's still there, hidden in the shadows. I can feel her, hiding out in my brain, her DNA pulsing through my veins.

Evelyn sighs, closing her eyes. Then her face twists into a picture of anger and she whirls around, kicking the wall and picking up a range of medical instruments, throwing them against the floor. She screams in frustration, her face twisted in a mask of fury.

"Why don't you know!?" She screeches when she turns back to me, her cheeks red with rage. "Why?"

Marcus lets the top half of the table down, so that I'm lying flat once more. They don't undo the straps though, and the cold metal still bites through my skin. He fiddles with another syringe at my side, connecting it to the needle and pushing the liquid into my body. My head fills with fog, my eyes drifting closed, and the last thing I see before I'm plunged into darkness is Marcus' face, a frown on his lips.

TRIS

I sit staring at the far wall for what seems like an age, absorbing the bloodied handprint and all that it entails. The carpet over there is slightly darker than everywhere else. That is where I lay, before Tobias sacrificed himself to save me.

Eventually the door opens with a soft click, and I blink as I look around to see Marcus as he enters. His face is pale, and he wears latex gloves on his hands. He doesn't look at me, simply placing a plastic tray with plastic utensils and plastic-looking food onto the floor. His eyes are blank and downcast as he leaves, closing the door behind him.

My stomach grumbles as I look at the 'food' and I don't even bother questioning it's edibility as I pounce on the plastic tray. The bread roll rough and dry, the bowl of plain white rice coloured only by cold and slimy tinned carrots. I lift my spoon and scoop the bland food into my salivating mouth, savouring the bare flavours as they slide down my throat. The glass of water is like ambrosia as I pour it over my tongue and it slides down after the food, washing away the last of the crumbs and filling in the last of the gaps.

I push the empty tray back towards the door, then stop and stand. After Marcus closed it, I didn't hear a click.

It's a chance I have to take- I take hold of the handle, my fingers wrapping around the metal agonisingly slowly. A twist of my wrist, my wounded side aching as I push down the handle and pull on the door…

And it opens.

The air of the corridor is cool when it hits my face, fresh compared to the staleness of my 'cell'. It prickles my skin, waking up my muscles as I take one step and then another down the corridor towards freedom. My mind navigates for me, finding the elevator bank and taking me down the atrium, but I don't find Tobias anywhere. I do find Marcus, however, skulking off down a corridor with a bottle of water in his hands.

My footsteps are as silent as I can make them as I follow him through the building, treading around broken tiles and piles of debris. He stops, pulling open a door to a small and sterile room and stepping inside.

The room has a window in the door, and through it I see the horribly white room. A bench littered in metallic instruments lines one wall, a sink built into the tile on the other. Marcus sits in the middle of the room on a black office chair, drinking from the bottle as he lifts his legs up and props them on the edge of a grey metal table. On the table is what I dreaded finding here, the one person I wanted to see most, but not like this. Tobias.

My heart constricts in my chest as I push open the door, stepping into the room and glaring at Marcus with all the strength I can muster. "Beatrice." He sighs, taking another swig of the bottle. "I knew you'd track me down."

It seems strange that he isn't fighting me, but when I look closely I can see the tiredness in his eyes, the fatigue in his shaking hands.

"If I leave here now, Evelyn need never know it was I who let you go." He stands, putting the bottle of water on the chair as he walks past me and to the door. "There are scissors on the workbench." He adds flatly, opening the door to leave.

"Why are you doing this?" I blurt out, Tobias momentarily out of my mind. "Why are you letting us go?"

"Because," He responded, digging his hands into his pocket and holding the door open with his foot. "He is my son. I may have beat him in the past, and I may have consented to doing this in the first place, but I never intended for him to be used like this. Physically hurt is one thing- those scars heal. It's something he taught me in the dining hall last year… it's the mental scars that last the longest, the injuries of the mind that hurt the most."

I nod, not quite understanding but agreeing completely. "But why are you letting us go?"

"I'm not letting you, Beatrice." He turns away from me, checking his wrist for the time. "I'm giving you a chance."


	16. Chapter 16

TRIS

"It's a simulation." I reply to Tobias' unanswered question as I cut the ties at his wrists and ankles and heave him upright. His eyes are only half open, his brain foggy with unanswered questions and a cloud of narcotics. "They were testing things on us, on both of us."

I heave his arm over my shoulder, pulling him to his feet and stumbling towards the door. At the last minute, I tuck the pair of scissors into one of the belt-loops of Tobias' old jeans. "Tris…" His voice is a mumble, his lips barely parting enough for his words to escape.

"Shh, come on. We have to get out of here." He stumbles along with me, dragging his feet along the floor and trying so hard to keep going. We reach the atrium, and he's standing a little straighter and his footsteps are more walking and less dragging, but he's tired, exhausted. "Please, Tobias. Just keep going."

"Cara…" My stomach turns, an apparition of her glassy eyes and blood-streaked face flashing into my mind.

"It's not real." I swallow, pulling him forwards. "It's not real, Tobias." But it is real. It's too real. Tobias lurches to the side, pulling me through a door that does not lead to outside. "Tobias! Where are you going!?"

He shouts something that I don't hear and stumbles into the room, holding onto the wall for support. I follow him with a sigh, my nerves high and racing. He staggers down a short flight of stairs, and as we walk the air gets colder and colder. "Morgue." He pants as I catch up to him, just before taking off again.

His hands are shaking as he pulls sheet after sheet off the dozens of bodies lined up on tables. The bodies beneath are yellowed, the skin sagging and sinking in places it shouldn't. Some of the people have orange tags on their wrists, while some are blue. Under the last sheet lies Cara, her eyes still open to the world.

Tobias lets out an agonising cry, turning to me with tear stained cheeks. "I hoped…"

"She's gone, Tobias." He nods, his chest rising and falling awkwardly as he struggles to hold back a sob. I take his hand, trying to avoid looking down at Cara.

"She's here." He whispers, squeezing my hand as he turns to me. His eyes are ringed by dark circles, his lips bloodied and bitten. "In my head."

I shake my head, squeezing his hand and looking up into his eyes. "That's not possible, Tobias."

"It is- she is! They did something, said something about her DNA… CARA SHUT UP I'M TRYING TO THINK!" He screams out, banging his fist against the table in frustration. I try and quiet him down- surely by now our absence has been noted..

"What did they say, Tobias?"

"They… I _think_ they took her DNA and injected it into me. They must have mixed it with some kind of serum so that her memories would live in me… but…" He closes his eyes, his hand finding Cara's cold, brittle fingers. "It's like having her in there with me. It's so crowded, Tris."

He looks at me, and his eyes are red with tears. He's so tired of running, of fighting.

"It's okay." I tell him, unhooking his hand from Cara's and turning him away from the nativity of death before us. "Look at me. We can do this. First, we escape. We get out into the city, lie low and figure this out."

"How do I know I can trust you? The way you've been around me…"

I let go of him, sliding my hand into the back pocket of my jeans. "Because."

His hands tremble as he takes hold of the small pile of photographs, the crumpled forbidden images of me and my brother and my mother and father.

"I'm sorry, Tris." He says, folding the pictures back into my hands. "I didn't mean for any of them to die."

"It's not your fault, Four." I reply, taking hold of his hand again and running my thumb along his palm. He's shaking, shivering all over in this cold hell. "They died because they were good people, and it was their duty. They were abnegation. They were selfless. Your mother and father are bad people. If any of this is anybody's fault, it's theirs." He nods, and I pull him close to me. It's a bit of a weird place to kiss- in a morgue- but I plant one on his stubbled jawline regardless. "Remember who the real enemy is."

We turn together to face Cara again, and Tobias winces against some paint I can't see. "Cara, _please_." He begs in a whisper, putting both of his hands over his ears. "Cara, stop crying. Cara…"

I lean forwards, coming into his line of vision. My tiny frame doesn't block his view of her body, but his eyes shift to find mine and he drops his hands from his ears, his whole body trembling. "Cara died doing the right thing. We were trying to protect the people in this city, but they're past saving. We have to let her go." His eyes are watering as he nods, leaning around me and putting his fingers on Cara's eyelids. He draws them to a close, and I retrieve the sheet from the floor. "Goodnight, Cara."

"Goodnight." His voice cracks as he copies my words, tucking the final inch of the sheet over her blank face. Tears drip down his cheeks and I wipe them away, wrapping my hands around his body and pressing my head into his heaving chest.

"Better?" I whisper, stroking his back as he winds his fingers in my hair.

"Yeah." He whispers back, his voice still choked with grief. "She's gone. She's really gone."

TOBIAS

The shouting ceases, Cara's voice fading away as I close her eyes. _I'm sorry._

_I'm not dead!_

Cara, you are. I'm sorry. You can't stay here. You have to go.

_I don't. I can't._

Cara, please.

She seems to huff inside my brain, defeat clouding her voice as she considers her body.

_I'm really gone, aren't I. All this is just inside your head_.

Yeah.

_And you want your mind back to yourself, right?_

A little. I mean, I don't want you to go. I just… want you to rest in peace.

She sighs, and if she had a body I imagine she would be closing her eyes in surrender.

_Okay._

But her voice is already fading too much. Tris pulls the sheet back over Cara's stiff frame, and I tuck the final inch under her head.

"Better?" Tris asks, her eyes wide and concerned. I nod, choking out a reply as she nuzzles her face into my chest.

"She's gone."

Tris steps back, her fingers still clutching my hand. Her skin is still pale, her eyes sunk into dark puddles as she strokes my hand. No words pass between us as she pulls me back across the morgue, determination lining her skinny face as we ascend the stairs. She pauses by the door, her hand resting on the pair of scissors sticking out from her belt loop.

"We might have to fight our way out." She whispers, pulling out the scissors and resting her other hand on the door handle. "Ready?"

"As I'll ever be."

She whips the door open and slides out into the atrium, and I follow her on trembling legs. Why didn't I pick up something from the morgue to use as a weapon? The only person between us and the exit is Zeke, standing in the centre of the Atrium with his gun in his hands. Out of everybody, why is it him?

Tris creeps forwards and I tip-toe after her. We edge across the corridor, sneaking past cracked tiles and moving slowly so that our shoes do not squeak on the floor. We've almost reached the exit when Zeke shouts, his booming voice freezing us in our tracks.

He turns with his gun raised, his finger hovering on the trigger. Tris is frozen in place, her hands uselessly clutching the scissors. Time slows down as I dive for them, ripping them from her fingers and sending the shining silver blades spinning at Zeke. He presses down on the trigger, firing as us as he falls. The bullets hit the tiles around us and I fall on top of Tris, wrapping my body around hers as blasts of metal and ceramic fill the air.

"Tris?" I whisper as the silence envelopes us, stroking the top of her head as she turns to face me. "Come on."

I push myself off her, helping her to her feet, but as we turn to run, Evelyn springs from one of the elevators. She wields a gun, a long silver thing shining in the dawn light streaming through the doors. As time before slowed, now it speeds up. We turn, pushing our way through the doors as Evelyn chases us, firing bullet after bullet at our retreating backs.

The cool air of outside hits me as we run, filling my lungs with the sweet freshness of the outside world. I don't even notice the lingering stench of decaying corpses as I hop bundles of fabric and sprint across the courtyard, pulling Tris behind me.

We turn a corner and pause, looking over our shoulders. The place is deserted, with Evelyn retreating back through the doors with a smile on her face. I turn back to Tris- and notice why.

Her eyes are wide and wild with fear, and her body is pressed into the building. I step forward, extending my arms to hold her close, to comfort her. She screams, stepping away. Blood blossoms on her skin, soaking her shirt as she slides to the floor. Great heaving sobs wrack her body as she curls against the wall, screaming and howling. "Tris?" She shakes her head, burying her fear-twisted face in her hands. I crouch at her side, gently resting my hand on her shoulder- but she prises herself from my grip.

"You monster!" She yells, her mouth open and twisted in sheer grief. "Don't touch me!"

"Tris?"

"GET AWAY FROM ME!"

"It's not real! It's a simulation!" The neck of the shirt falls down her shoulder, revealing a spidery web of purple on her skin, spiralling out from a tiny red hole in her flesh. "Tris!" She shakes her head, closing her eyes and falling to the floor once more, burying her head in her hands and trying to hide from me. "We have to get off the streets. If we stay here, we'll be killed."

"He's right, you know." A voice says behind me. A cock of a gun sounds behind my head and I turn, dread rising within me like a wave.

"Matthew?"


	17. Chapter 17

TOBIAS

"Get up." His voice is shaking just as much as his hands as he clutches the gun, his arms straight out from his chest. I do as he asks, stepping away from Tris and putting my hands above my head. "Why did you join Dauntless?"

"I…" I'm confused. I expected him to kill me outright, to shoot me dead here in this deserted street- but instead he shows me mercy. "I chose Dauntless to escape my father. I chose Dauntless because I want to be brave; and selfless and honest and smart and peaceful. But bravery- that was what I needed as the stepping stone to work towards all those things."

Matthew nods and lowers his gun, and a half dozen figures step out from the shadows on the other side of the street. I scan the faces with my eyes, recognising each and every one of them. Christina is among them, her eyes focussed on Tris. "What's wrong with her?" She asks, stepping across the street and kneeling down. Tris on the other hand, is cowering against the wall, blood dripping down her arm.

"I don't know." I answer, turning to help- but Matthew grabs my wrist and spins me back towards him. "What's going on?"

"If you stay here, you'll be killed." He repeats my words to me, his face serious and set. "We have to hide- but we can't trust you. I hope you understand."

"How do we know we can trust _you_?" I retort, stepping into his face.

"You can trust us, Four." Christina replies in a bored voice, reaching into her pocket for something. Even as I watch, she draws out an empty fist and swings it around, punching Tris in the side of the face.

"What did you do that for!?" I scream out, launching myself at Christina. I push her away from Tris, cradling the smaller, unconscious girl in my arms. "Why did you hit her?"

A shadow is cast over me as Matthew steps up behind me again, his gun still clutched in his hand. "She's in a simulation. We don't know what effects this could have, so for the time being it's best that she doesn't hear or see anything we say."

"Well, thanks to _her_ escape," I spit at Christina, anger bubbling inside me, "I too have been subject to experiments conducted by Evelyn and Marcus. And I'm just fine." Christina shrugs at Matthew, then a sharp pain hits me as the butt of the gun collides with my head. "You son of a-" I gasp as I fall forwards, but the world is quickly dimming.

"Sorry about this." Christina shrugs again, withdrawing a black sack from her pocket. "Just a precaution."

The world goes dark as she shoves the sack over my face, tying the drawstrings at my neck as Matthew handcuffs my hands behind me. I hear them doing the same to Tris, and their friends lift the both of us up. Cooler air hits me as we're drawn into the shadows of the surrounding buildings. Metal grinds against concrete and I'm lowered into a hole, helped to climb down a cold ladder into the dampness of the city sewers below.

We walk for ages, trudging along a narrow pavement in the dark, a rusty railing running along my side. I try and count the turns we take, but eventually I give up and try to anticipate where we will end up. Somewhere along the line I hear a scream and a splash, muttering and gasping and swearing from behind me. I stop walking and Matthew pushes me forwards, but I protest.

"Tris!" I shout, and she gasps from behind me, spluttering in the water.

"Tobias?" Her voice echoes down the corridor, high pitched and loud and projected by the round walls.

"Oh my god guys, keep it down!" I hear Christina hissing in the front. She pushes past me, unlocking the handcuffs and pulling the bag from my head. When I open my eyes, she's right in front of me. Her eyes are dark, her lips straight. "If you don't shut the _heck_ up, we'll get caught. We'll all die, and there'll be no way out of the city at all. We're the last ones left, in case it didn't occur to you- and I'd like to keep as many of us alive as I possibly can."

She bends down, taking Tris' uncuffed hands and dragging her out of the grimy water and onto the kerb. Her hair is drenched with green water, sticking to her face while drips of slime dribble onto the floor. "Are you okay?" Christina asks, and Tris nods. She looks at me with wide eyes, guilt etched in her face.

"Tobias I…" But I shake my head. It can wait. There has to be an explanation for all this. There has to be.

"Come on," Matthew grumbles, pushing me forwards by the shoulder. "We have to keep going."

TRIS

My head pounds as I sit hunched over at the table. We're hidden in a small office, just off the end of one of the disused sewer pipes. This is the safe house, apparently. There's a whole range of rooms just through this door- an underground shelter packed with provisions in case of nuclear attack- one that was never needed, let alone used.

But before we can advance, Christina and the others have to make sure we're safe. Matthew is busy with Tobias at the moment, asking him questions about himself and then me in hushed tones while Christina sits next to me, a cup of water in her hand. Two of the others have gone out to scout the surrounding streets to make sure we weren't followed, while the others have gone deeper into the bunker to prepare a room for a meeting, or something.

"Are you sure you don't want to drink any?" Christina asks, tilting her glass towards me. I shake my head, burying my face in my folded arms atop the desk.

"I can't trust it. You'd understand." She nods but looks worried as she takes another sip. I suppose I would be too, but after the nightmares, the living terrors that I have begun to face almost daily…

Matthew finishes with Tobias and crosses the room. "Hey, Tris. Can you, um, sit on the desk?"

I obey and sit facing him, the collar of my shirt pulled aside so he can examine the wound in my shoulder. "How do you know all this stuff? Your memory was erased, just like the others."

"You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the memory serum works, Tris." Matthew places his hand on my forehead, making me lie down on the table. Christina gives him a disgusted look and gets up, going over to sit by Tobias on the other side of the room. "The memory serum was formulated to attack certain memories. When the bomb went off, it dispersed the same serum over the city and the Bureau- so we forgot the same things that the people in the city forgot. In this instance, that was everything about the factions and the divergent."

He moves around the table, taking Christina's old seat and leaning close to my injured shoulder. It throbs, the purple veins of serum spreading over my skin like an inky web.

"We remembered everything else- all the solid knowledge that we've collected over our lives. It's a bit of a stretch to try and explain it to somebody who doesn't know the serum basics and exactly how the brain works, but different parts of your memory are stored in different parts of your brain- and different serums affect different parts. The memory serum is one of the few that can be adjusted to affect any part of the brain- so it could completely erase your creative abilities or your fears, or it could just target your education or even certain parts of your life."

I nod like I understand, even though I really don't. Matthew gets up and walks across the room, returning with a small plastic box. It's green with a white plus on top, and he unclicks the clips that keep it closed to take out a small plastic packet. The packet in turn contains a tiny white wipe, soaked in a liquid that stings when he rubs it over my shoulder. He finds a pair of latex gloves and pulls them onto his hands, then extracts a small roll of black fabric from his pocket.

"This might hurt," He explains, rolling out the fabric next to my head. "It looks like there's a bullet of some sort embedded in your shoulder. We need to get it out before it gets infected- and both Christina and Tobias tell me you're no stranger to that." I nod again, my side twinging in memory.

"How many of you are left? It must have been about thirty of us who came here…"

"About six." He replies, pushing a pair of glasses up his nose and arranging a mask on his face. It muffles his voice as he continues to speak. I hiss as he unwraps a syringe and sticks it into my arm, pushing a cloudy white liquid into my skin. "We all went with the plan; only we noticed the streets were a lot quieter than we thought. The only people we encountered were dead. We sent a scout group into Candor HQ before the rest of us went in- it was only about five people- but none of them came back out."

He twists the tweezers into the tiny hole in my flesh, and I yelp with pain.

"Sorry," He winces, rolling his shoulders and pushing the tiny metal prongs further into my shoulder. "We waited for about an hour, but there was no sign of any kind of life. It was a risk, but we sent a few more people in. This time, someone came back out. He was drenched in blood, his arm hanging from his shoulder. John, I think his name was. I… I shot him, out of pity. Not before he'd told us what he'd found, though."

"What did he find?" I clench my fists, but Matthew frowns.

"Relax for me, Tris. It'll hurt more if you're tense. He told me that Evelyn and Marcus had teamed up to take over the city- that they were going down and willing to take everyone and everything with them. They're not planning on coming out of this alive, no. It doesn't matter if we kill them- they made their choice. It's the general citizens that I'm worried about. They didn't have a choice in any of this, and their minds and perspectives have been altered so they really don't have a sense between right and wrong any more. The only way to right that would be to let off another memory serum bomb- one that attacks that part of the brain or resets them completely. The factions were all they'd ever known, you see, whereas we had much more knowledge stored in our brains. I guess then we'd re-educate them in the Bureau and release them into other experiments or into the fringe. This city is ruined… It can't be saved, not really."

He pulls away from me, his tweezers soaked with blood and clutching a tiny, round pellet. It pings as he drops it into a glass, which he slides across the table. I move to sit up, but he holds my shoulders. "Not yet you don't." He puts the tweezers down on the table and roots around in the box again, searching for a dressing. First though, he finds a needle attached to a syringe. His hands are cold as he rests his fingers on my skin, sliding the needle into the thickest of the purple lines and taking a syringe full of blood. "We have to find out what this serum is." He mentions, detaching the needle and sliding the rest of the syringe into a plastic bag.

"So you're sure it's a serum then?" I ask as he lets me sit up, pressing a pad of cotton to my shoulder.

"Almost certain. It has all the characteristics of the fear serum, but it seems to build slightly on what the simulation serum uses- only without the transmitters. All serums are temporary- except the certain memory serums and the death serum of course- so I'm hoping that this one will wear off soon. Until then, we're going to approach this in a scientific manner- someone will always be with you when you're sleeping to try and study your reactions to your dreams." I nod, my head still pounding from earlier today. "The intense study of this serum will come later, though. Right now it's a race against time to take down both Evelyn and Marcus, to get back to the Bureau and to release a memory sweep on the whole city."

I nod again, and look over to Tobias as Matthew uses some tape to fix the cotton to my shoulder. His face is still lined with hurt, his eyes blank as Christina chatters away to him. "Hey." I nuzzle up to him, tucking myself under his arm. Christina gets to her feet and gives me a small, sad smile before she gets up to go back over to Matthew, and I look up at Tobias.

"How are you feeling?" He whispers, his face close to mine.

"Really tired." I answer, wrapping my arms around his waist. "Tired, and sorry."

"Why are you sorry?"

"I've hurt you."

"It's not your fault." He sighs, his breath warm as it sweeps over my face. "It's Evelyn's. Marcus' too."

I nod, my head resting on his warm chest. He holds me close to him, like he's scared to let go. "It's a simulation." I whisper into his chest, my whole body softening against his as I listen to the beating of his heart. "It was in the drips, I think, and in that bullet. Matthew thinks it's like the fear simulation, only it takes what you're really seeing and twists it into the things you fear the most." Tobias nods, resting his chin on my head. Then, he lifts me up so our bodies are pressed together and pushes his lips against mine. "What was that for?"

"Because, Tris. I love you, and as each day passes it becomes more and more evident how close I've come to losing you and how lucky I am to have you. I want to treasure each and every second I have in your company, and as much as I can help it I will never leave your side."

I smile, my eyes wet with tears of tiredness and adoration. "Okay."

"Okay," He grins. I laugh, sticking my fingers into his side. He curls in half, a smile breaking on his lips. Suddenly his aged skin looks younger: the lines of stress that line his eyes turn to laughter, his stubble making him look hot instead of tired. "I love you, Beatrice Prior." He smiles, pressing his mouth to my forehead. "You're the sunshine in my life, the beacon of hope in this city of destruction."

I lace my hands with his and in this instant, everything is right and nothing is wrong. "I love you too, Tobias."


	18. Chapter 18

TOBIAS

We sit around a table deep inside the bunker. Tris leans her head on my shoulder, her eyes closed but her hand still twitching in my palm. "I vote we just storm in there and shoot them. They've had too many chances to right this and still they only do wrong- we should just march in, get them before they even know what hit them," Someone on the other side of the table says, slamming his hand on the tough wooden surface.

"No, I vote we let them see us, give them a trial and shoot them anyway!" A woman adds, her fist colliding with the wood with an even louder bang than the other.

It's no good. I know what they've done, and the evil connected with the name Eaton follows me like a bad smell. "Hey," I whisper, nudging Tris' head with my shoulder. "Come on." She sways on her feet as I stand up, the room spinning around me as tiredness grows inside me like a tree, the roots reaching out through my veins and taking over every inch of my body.

"Where are you going?" Christina shouts over everybody else, shining her torch onto our faces in the dim room.

"We're tired- both of us. We can't make any sort of decision and we don't know what you've been planning anyway. We trust you to come up with something good." She nods and points to the door behind her.

"Through there. The first six rooms are taken but there's more around the corner. I think room 9 has a double bed." She smiles, turning back to the group as I pull open the door and start marching past the rooms.

Tris pushes open the door to room 9 and falls onto the bed, crawling to the pillow and letting her face fall onto the soft fabric. I follow, curling next to her and pulling the duvet over both of our bodies. "What's wrong?" Tris whispers, her face close to mine. Her hand finds my hip and slides under my shirt, crawling along the black tattoos that ink my skin.

"I can't sit in there and listen to them discussing how they're going to carry out my parent's deaths." I murmur in return, my lips pressed against the soft skin of her forehead. I curl my body protectively around her, my arms finding her hips and holding her to my body. My legs tangle with hers beneath the duvet and we push each other's shoes from our feet, wiggling our toes together as our sneakers fall to the floor with a dull thump.

"It's difficult, I know. We can't let them live, because they're just so _evil_. The only good to ever come from them is _you_." She pushes her lips against mine and our mouths dance together, a blush blooming over my cheeks in the darkness as she lifts my shirt completely from my body.

"Oh, I'm far from good." I mutter into her mouth, only breaking contact for the brief second it takes to remove her shirt. Our bare skin clashes as we wriggle from our jeans, our legs tangling beneath the sheets. "I love you." My voice is a whisper, a gasp, a pant as our lips collide again and again and her hands run over my bare body and I stroke her soft skin. My hands find the bandages on her stomach and the cotton taped to her shoulder, my lips tracing the injuries below as my gasping breaths run over her soft skin.

Eventually we fall asleep, our limbs tangled beneath the sheets as our chests rise and fall in perfect synchrony. When I wake, I lie there in the darkness with my head turned towards her on the pillow. I watch her sleeping through half-closed lids, her perfect face more relaxed than I have ever seen it. For a moment everything is perfect, but then she begins to scream.

I snap upright, moving to put my weight over her trembling body. Matthew and Christina run into the room with wide, scared eyes, and Christina takes her arm while Matthew holds down her kicking feet. She sobs in our grip, screaming as her eyes take in images we can't see.

"Wake her up?" Christina shouts above the noise, her eyes desperately searching my face. Tears drip from Tris' eyes and run onto the pillow as I shake her shoulders, desperately repeating her name in her ear, but her eyes do not clear.

"Tris!" I shake her gently, begging her to wake up. "Please!" My lungs tighten, my breathes refusing to come as she screams and sobs.

She finally wakes, looking around the room with wild and tear-stained eyes. Her arms encase her trembling body as she rolls onto her side, tucking her knees to her chest and burying her face in the pillow. "I think we need to move quickly." Matthew whispers from the end of the bed, his hand pressed nervously to the mattress.

I nod in agreement, looking up at Christina. "We'll get dressed." She nods, then turns to leave with Matthew trawling in her wake.

"It's okay, Tris. It was just a nightmare." I murmur, stroking her wet cheeks with my thumb. "If you get up, we can get on with their plan. We can be safe."

"Plan?" She croaks as she moves her head to stare up at me. Her cheeks and eyes are red, her damp hair plastered to her forehead. "We always plan, it never goes right. We plan, we get there…"

"All hell breaks loose, I know." I lean over her and pull her clothes from the floor, helping her to pull the shirt over her head.

"We plan, we get there- and people _die_, Tobias."

"Death is a part of life, Tris." I assure her, pulling her to my body. She wraps her arms around my shoulders, burying her face in my collar. "People die. It's a sucky thing we just tend to do, okay?"

She nods, but sniffs away more tears. "I'm just sick of it. I'm tired of running, of fighting. I just want a normal life, you know?"

"I know." It hurts inside, to know that my Tris, who has always been so strong, seems to be so hurt. I push her away from me, pulling my shirt over my head and wiping away the last of her tears with a swipe of my thumb. "Why don't you tell me about those dreams?"

*  
TRIS

"The nightmares come thick and fast, like the simulations back in Initiation." I choke, taking a gulp of something warm and strong that burns my throat. "The crows haunt me, the wall of water drowning me and pushing me under. I'm burnt on a stake while the other initiates and Marcus and Evelyn and Caleb and my parents laugh, I drown in an ocean of blood and have to shoot Tobias." I look down into my glass, swirling the golden liquid around as I try and push the image of his cold, dead eyes from my mind. "It's not just the familiar fears I have to face- there's more. Tobias falls from the Ferris wheel and I can't catch him. Last night…" I turn to Tobias, ignoring Christina and Matthew's concerned faces. "You fell. You were on the ground, barely alive, and Marcus was there. You'd just fallen from right at the top of the wheel and he was _beating_ you… and I screamed for him to stop but he just kept going."

Tobias shivers, taking my hand across the table. My eyes burn with tiredness, and I choke back the last of my drink. I feel a little better inside, warmer and slightly fuzzy, but the darkness of my dream is like a shadow in the back of my mind.

"It's okay. We're going to stop him from hurting anybody ever again." One of the other guys from the Bureau says as he sits next to Tobias, a steaming cup of coffee clutched in his hands.

Tobias bristles, his hand tightening on mine for just a second before his face flattens into a smile. "Yeah, we'll stop them. Marcus- and Evelyn too."

Christina and Matthew lead the other four Bureau members from the room to put the finishing touches to their plan, and I look up at Tobias. "You're not going to let them die, are you?"

He sighs, letting go of my hand and burying his face in his palms. "I can't kill them. They're my _parents_." His eyes close in defeat as he runs his fingers through his hair. "And yet I want to see them pay for everything they've done. To both of us, but to everyone else too."

I nod and get to my feet, feeling drained but awake. "We'll see what the plan is." My voice is a whisper as I walk around the table, moving to sit in his lap. His hair tickles my wrists as I tuck my hands behind his head, tucking my face against his shoulder. "If you don't like it, we'll go along with it for as long as you are comfortable, then we'll bail and do our own thing." I lean up, kissing his jaw. The stubble on his chin is sharp against my lips, but it makes me feel alive. "And if you don't want them to die, then we'll think of something. They are human, after all."

He laughs, leaning down to kiss my forehead. "No, they're definitely monsters. It's the two of us who are human."

"Are you two lovebirds ready to be briefed?" Christina calls through the door, and I unwrap myself from Tobias' grip.

"Come on, _Four_."

"After you, _Six_." He smiles, and I lace my fingers with his as we walk from the dining room.

We end up in the small meeting room that forms the entrance to the bunker. Tobias and I sit on one edge of the table, with Christina and Matthew opposite. Two other bureau members sit with us- while two are not even here.

"We'll be split into two teams- Christina, Tobias, Tris and I on Team A, with Helen, and Gavin on Team B. We'll also have a Team C, consisting of Michael and Jill. Team A will move first, as we have all the people with fundamental knowledge of the layout of the Merciless Mart and what each room is now used for. Our job is to split into two sub-teams- Tobias and Christina in one with Tris and Me on the other. We'll then track down Evelyn and Marcus and bring them to the meeting hall."

Everyone nods along, and for now it seems to make sense. "Team B will work through the city, using stealth and their anonymity to track down all and any members of the enemy party. They'll need to be taken up to the meeting room, where we will convene at fifteen-hundred hours. The first pair back to the meeting hall will serve as guards to keep everyone inside the room. Team C will then deploy the memory serum, resetting the whole of the city's population."

"That won't work." I object, grabbing my mug of tea off the table. It warms my cold hands as I lean forward, Tobias behind me. "We can't track down everybody in the city, especially not with just two people. It'll be easier to send a pair of people back to the bureau to obtain the vaccination against the memory serum, to ensure that we keep our memories."

"Maybe we don't want to remember." Christina's eyes flash red, her face traced with lines of pain and grief. "Maybe I want to forget."

"Well, some of us want to remember. There are things that have shaped us as people! As much as there's things I want to forgot- Will's death, for one- there are people and experiences in my life that I can't just _erase_. You're willing to forget them? Will and Cara? You want me to forget my whole family, erase my life?" Somehow I'm on my feet, my mug steaming on the table between my hands.

"It won't erase your _life_, Tris. It'll reset you- and us- the same as the others. Erase memories of the factions, alter your perception of right and wrong…" Matthew insists, but I shake my head, biting my lip.

"I want a choice."

"The people in the city don't have a choice." Christina slams her fist onto the desk. "It's just fair that we all make that sacrifice. It's all about equality, all of this, and by knowing things that they don't…"

"Sure, the factions were a dumb idea. The idea of the Divergent, of somebody who possesses the qualities valued by each of the factions… it was just stupid. In an ideal world, everybody would be honest and selfless and brave and peaceful and smart." I look down at Tobias, thinking about the tattoos that cover his back. "Equality isn't about not knowing, or knowing the same thing as other people. It's about possessing the qualities to make you a good person."

"You think you're a good person?" Christina shrieks, high pitched. "Think about how many people you've killed, the amount of people who have sacrificed themselves for _you_."

"I can never not think about them, Christina." I fall to my seat, closing my eyes. "You think I can just forget how the light left Will's eyes? You think it doesn't bother me that Cara gave her life because of the mistake we all made in coming here? What about my parents? Caleb?" She looks away when I open my eyes, but I fix my gaze on her and continue to speak. "You've lost people too, I get that. You've lost Will and Cara, you've lost your family too. I get that, I really do. But it's better to feel the pain than to forget it completely, right? As it stands, they died for a reason. If you forget, they died for nothing. No matter how painful it is, you have to remember. For them."

She shakes her head, but her eyes are wet with tears when she looks back into my pleading face.

"Fine," Matthew says, his face drawn. "But you'll have to do it. It'll have to be you that goes back to the Bureau- to either stop the others from setting off the bomb or to get the vaccination to protect the rest of us." I nod and get to my feet. Tobias follows, but Matthew shakes his head. "If you're going, you go it alone."


	19. Chapter 19

TOBIAS

I walk with Tris down the sewers to the closest grid, and together we climb the rusty and slimy ladder to the surface. The natural light stings my eyes as we step onto the street, sliding the heavy grate back into place in the middle of the road. She readies herself, rolling her shoulders and tilting her head to one side. "They need every man they can get." Her voice is a sad little whisper, like the tweeting of a baby bird.

"I'm coming with you." I say, taking her in my arms. "I'm no use to them anyway. I can't kill my parents, or even watch Christina or Matthew do it. I can't."

She nods, her fingers lacing with mine as we turn away from the city behind us. "You realise we're never coming back?"

"Frankly, I'm glad." I squeeze her hand and we begin to walk, heading towards the old warehouses where the factionless used to live. It's a long shot, but we're hoping we can find one of the cars that they used to work on fixing up. Before she effectively became a dictator, Evelyn shared with me that one vital piece of information, and it is this last thread of hope that we rely on as we slip through the streets.

Unfortunately- and keeping with everything that's happened so far in my life- the car was a bit of a long shot. "What do we do now?" Tris asks, her voice thick with hopelessness.

"Now, we walk." I squeeze her hand and turn from the warehouse, beginning a hurried jog across the city. "If we're fast, we can make it there just in time. You never know- opportunity may come knocking."

We sprint together through the city until Tris stops, wincing in pain. "I can't." She gasps, holding her side.

"We have to keep going." I assure her, taking her fingers in mine and dragging her after me. We move on at a fast jog- nowhere near fast enough- but we're already nearing the edge of the city. "We have to keep moving." The fence surrounding the city is unguarded but for the vulture-picked corpses lying rotten at the open gates. My whole body aches with exhaustion as I slow to a walk, crossing the boundary with the sense of finality building in my chest like a wave. "We're never coming back. Ever."

Tris nods, smiling through her fatigue. "Come on. Next stop- the bureau."

The roads are cracked and bumpy, the tarmac crumbling beneath our feet. A thought strikes me as the Amity compound rising above the horizon. The greenhouses shine like the North Star, guiding us across the plain until we arrive at the orchard.

"The Amity have- had- bikes." Tris says, running through the trees. She leaps over winding roots and ducks beneath branches, swinging into a shed at the end of the row. "Yes! Tobias! In here!"

She yelps with happiness as she draws out first one bike and then another. The red frames are dotted with rust, but the rubber tires are pumped up and secure. A smile plays at my lips as I take hold of one bike, watching as Tris mounts the other. Neither of us has ever ridden one before, but the taste of hope in the air is unmistakable.

We push off, cycling through the rows of apple trees until we reach the road. By the time the wheels hit solid ground, my knees and ankles are aching with effort. I stop to wait for Tris, who arrives just seconds after I stop. Her hair is windswept, sticking out in all directions and whipping around her face as she draws to a halt at my side. She smiles, her rosy wind-whipped cheeks pink in the early-afternoon light. "Ready?"

"Ready."

Like adventurers riding on steel steeds, we gallop along the crumbling road. We chase the sun, racing it to the finish line upon the horizon- the bureau. Tris laughs alongside me, the wind whipping her hair across her face as she rides. It ruffles my hair too, making it stand on end as my legs propel me forwards.

We bump up and down as we ride, our laughs jittering like those of children as our muscles burn, our lungs screaming for a break. It's almost easy to forget the horrors we've seen as we travel- until we reach the fringe.

It's just a few rows of houses, really. They're long abandoned, the walls crumbling down. Dark shadows dart down the narrow streets, children sitting half-clothed in burnt out cars. We pause on the road, looking out into the city. A bundle of brightly-coloured and mismatches shoes lies crumpled in the ditch at the side of our path, a silver watch gleaming on the thin wrist.

I bend down, not looking into man's face as I unclip the watch from around his arm and clip it onto the front of my bike. If the watch face is telling the truth, if the sky too is honest- then we have an hour left before the memory bomb is released. "Ready to move on?" I ask Tris, but she's staring wide-eyed at a small group of half-naked children, skinny and cold and standing at the very edge of the street.

"Those poor kids." Her horrified whisper chills me to the bones, and I grip her shoulder to wake her from her daze.

"We have to keep moving, Tris."

We pedal silently down the gritted road, moving like two horsemen of the apocalypse to our destination. It appears on the horizon, the glass building glinting in the sun. "There it is," Tris smiles, her face relaxed. But her smile doesn't stay long before it drops in realisation, her wide eyes shining with fear. "Tobias," she trembles. "Where do they keep the serums?"

"In the weapons lab." I respond, pulling up beside her. A gust of wind blows up behind us, its cold tendrils stroking my skull beneath my hair.

"Well then." She sets her face, straightening her shoulders and preparing to ride once more. "We've planned, and now we're here. I suppose it's only fitting that it's time for all hell to break loose."

TRIS

Tobias looks at me like I'm crazy when we duck into the darkened atrium, lit only by the sunlight shining in through the tinted windows. I push my bike against the fountain, dipping my sore hands into the familiar cool of the water. "The weapons lab," I start, my voice a whisper in the vast, empty room. "Is heavily protected. It's not just the 'nuke-everything-bomb-room' that is shielded by death serum, you know. They put all the weapons in clear sight in there, sticking them on glass walls like a sign of temptation. What you don't realise is that the room is hooked so you have to put in a code in the central panel to get yourself a weapon. Each individual weapon needs a different code, and if you get it wrong then you're dead. The serums section works on the same principle- different codes for different serums and if you get it wrong, it's the last thing you do." Tobias shudders, and I close my eyes as I sit down on the edge of the fountain.

"Tris." Tobias steps forwards, putting his fingers beneath my chin and forcing me to look at him. "Not all hope is lost." His lips curl into a smile as he pulls me to my feet, the sun shifting just an inch so that the rays shine through the windows and into the water. "All the simulations have to be developed somewhere." He strokes my jaw, his curled fingers soft against my neck.

"Serums lab?" I ask, but then Tobias' eyes widen with the sign of realisation.

"Matthew's lab. He has some spare syringes in his cabinets- I'm sure there's a vial of memory-serum repellent in there too."

"Are you sure?" I jump to my feet, my heart pounding in my chest like a clock, counting down to the end.

"Absolutely." He nods violently, starting down one of the long, tiled corridors.

The bureau is strangely empty as we move down the corridor, sprinting over the white tiles until we reach the door to Matthew's lab. We step into a small room, walled with glowing white tiles.

"What the…?" Tobias whispers, but then his eyes widen in fear and he steps back, his hands clawing at the wall.

I star at him, the tiles glowing dimly behind his petrified face. The room- it's almost like…

The one in Erudite headquarters- Jeanine's security. But why isn't it affecting me?

Tobias shivers, his face pale. His hair is whipping around his head like he's standing atop a huge building… of course- he is.

Then he shrinks, curling into a ball against the edge of the room. I know what this is- his fear of small spaces. It seems to take years for him to beat his fears, and I remember how scared he was when we went through his fear landscape together.

He stands, his hand out to stop his father from hitting him. I thought he'd beaten that fear? His eyes are wide and wet as he turns to look at me, a drawing a gun from his pocket. His fingers move against the invisible trigger, a tear streaming down his cheek as he stares at me, begging me with his eyes. "Tris." He shakes, looking away. "I'm so sorry."

His fingers squeeze the trigger and he falls to the ground, running his fingers through his hair. Then I realise- the only thing I'm scared of, after all I've been through- is watching Tobias get hurt.

"Come here." I kneel beside him, lifting him up gently and wrapping my arms around his back. "It's done. You're okay, I'm okay. It's done."

He nods, and pushes me away. He's still trembling, unable to look me in the eye.

"We're running out of time." I remind him, stepping across the room and pushing open the opposite door- the one to the lab. "We need to find the serum."

A clock on the wall counts down the time, ticking away the seconds until the others deploy the bomb, resetting everyone. Tobias runs to one side of the room and I to the other, and together we rifle desperately through the ceiling-high sets of compartments. Minutes pass, and its half past two when Tobias draws a set of needles from one of the drawers. "Half an hour." He whispers, placing the pair of needles on the table in the middle of the room.

I continue to search, Tobias pulling out drawer after draw and scattering paper on the floor. The second hand on the clock ticks loudly, an insistent reminder of how our time is running out. I throw aside research papers and a calculator, letting test tubes and petri dishes smash onto the tiles. Finally, I find it. One tiny vial of anti-serum. It's purple and clearly labelled, but there's only enough to inject one person. "Are there any more?"

We look around the room, our eyes desperate and wide, but Tobias shakes his head. Every drawer has been pulled out, papers and pens and glass littering the floor. "No." He whispers, horrified.

"You have it. I'll forget, you remember." I insist, pushing a needle and the vial into his hands.

He shakes his head. "It was you who wanted this; you who planned this whole thing. Please, Tris."

"I don't want you to forget, either." I'm aware of how much of a whiny child I sound, and accept the vial as he pushes it into my fingers.

"We don't have time to find another, Tris. Remember what Matthew said? I'll only forget the bad things, like everyone else. I won't forget you, ever." I shake my head, but his trembling hands pick up a syringe. He pulls the vial from my reluctant hands and draws back the plunger, pushing the needle through the plastic seal. "Please."

Finally I nod, watching the clock tick down. It strikes five minutes to three, and I turn back to him. His arm is outstretched, his hand reaching for my arm. "I'll do it." I croak, taking the needle and injecting the bright liquid just under my skin. Tobias takes my hand, squeezing my fingers and smiling weakly into my face. "Are you sure we have no time?"

"Come on; let's go to the CCTV room." I can tell he's trying to be strong, but his face is twisted with confliction. His hand trembles in mine as we push open the door, stepping into the darkened room. The screens are still on, flickering with images from all over the city.

It shocks me to look up at the screens, to see the entire population of the city crowded into the rounded room, right at the top of the merciless mart. It's only a few minutes now until the serum spreads, and Tobias' knuckles are white with his grip. Christina and Matthew raise their guns, pointing them at the heads of Evelyn and Marcus. Tobias' parents kneel on the floor in the middle of the room, Evelyn with Christina's gun pressed against her forehead, with Matthew's gun pressed against Marcus'. Tobias takes a deep breathe next to me, his eyes welling with tears as a million miles away, both Christina and Matthew pull the trigger.


	20. Chapter 20

TRIS

Tobias closes his eyes as the bang of the firing gun fills the little room. I squeeze his hand but his eyes roll behind his lids and he falls to the floor, limp and unmoving. My eyes catch the screens, where people are falling over benches and down the steps, crumbling to the ground like the buildings in the fringe.

Is it better for Tobias to wake up here, to see the dead bodies of his parents on the screen and remember everything he was supposed to forget? I don't know! I don't know!

I run over to the screens, fumbling at the wall around them in a desperate search for a wire or a switch. If he wants to know I can tell him, but he shouldn't have to see it. He stirs on the floor and I panic, leaping behind the empty panel and flicking at the switches until one by one, the screens shut down.

The room falls into darkness, light provided only by the glowing edges of the panel. Tobias groans and I rush to his side, stroking his cheek as his eyes flutter open.

"Tris?" He whispers, reaching towards me with his hands. His face is pale, his eyes blank and glazed as he squints up at me in the dim light.

"I'm here. I'm here." I press my mouth to his, letting my hair tickle his face as I taste the salt of tears on his lips. "It's okay." My trembling fingers stroke his cheekbones, tracing the outline of the stubble on his jaw as I kiss him again and again. "It's okay."

He grins, drawing my head closer to his with his hands so that I end up sitting over him, one leg on either side of his torso. "I know it's okay, silly." His voice is injected with laughter, and I can't bring myself to darken this new world for him. This is the happiest I have ever seen him, his blue eyes clear with fresh innocence.

"What do you remember?" I wonder as I sit back, helping him to sit up.

"What was there to forget?" He asks, running his hand through his hair as he looks around the room. "Tris," He starts, stumbling to his feet as I shuffle onto the floor. "Where are we?"

Getting to my feet, I brush the invisible dirt from my clothes and smile up at him. "Nowhere. We're not anywhere." I take his hand, squeezing it between my fingers as I get to my tiptoes and kiss him on the cheek. Hand in hand, we walk as far as the atrium. Our bikes are still leaning against the fountain, their handles dotted with splashes of water. Tobias steps towards them, but I pull him back. "No." He looks at me with his head tilted to the side, his eyes wide with questions.

"Then where?"

"I know a place." I answer, pulling him down the other corridor. We find our old dorm room and I sit down on my old bed, looking around at the others. It seems strange, that out of all of us it is only me who is truly left. Cara is dead, while Peter, Christina and Tobias have all forgotten. Tobias looks around, his eyes still glazed. For now, it seems I will have to do the thinking for both of us. "Here."

I get up again, moving the end table from between the two beds and pushing them together. Then for good measure, I do the same to the others, pushing them into one huge bed that spans the entire centre of the room. Tobias looks at me dumbly, pouting slightly. "Why?"

A grin plays at my lips as I clamber onto the nearest end table. He looks worried, creases manifesting on his forehead. "Watch." My lips twist into a grin as I fling myself forwards, landing on the beds and bouncing in the air again. Tobias copies, and suddenly we're lying side by side on a bed five times the normal size. "Fun, right?"

"A little." He smiles, taking my hand in his. "I'm really tired, Tris."

The memory serum has done its work, I realise. He needs to sleep, to let his mind fully heal over what has been taken from him. "Okay." I smile, cupping his jaw with my hand and planting a soft kiss on his cheek. "We'll sleep here, and tomorrow we'll go home." Only, I don't know where home is.

When I think about it, neither of us really has a home. Like in _Peter Pan_ in the old books from nursery school, we are the lost boys. We don't belong here in the Bureau- but at the same time we don't belong in the city, either. I sigh as I push my face into the pillow, looking over at Tobias. His face is relaxed and smooth, his eyes flickering with hints of dreams as he falls deeper into the world of sleep. Where will we go?

For a second, the possibility of giving up and leaving without him enters my mind. I could run away, start my own life in some city somewhere and let him forget all about me- but I can't do it. I can't live without him.

I grab a duvet off one of the other beds and bring it over, tucking it over Tobias and wriggling beneath it to lie with him. My limbs wrap around his until I'm clinging to him like a spider monkey, unable to let go. The darkness takes over the room as the setting sun collapses below the horizon, but I do not sleep. Instead I lie awake, listening to Tobias soft breathing at my side as endless possibilities circle my brain. _Where will we go?_

TOBIAS

I open my eyes, looking up at Tris' face in the dim evening light. She's sleeping- but fitfully. Her eyelids flutter and she shifts her head uncomfortably on the pillow, her features twisting into a wince and her hand curling into a fist on my side. I untuck her limbs from around my body, wrapping the heavy duvet around her shoulders as I plant a soft kiss on the tip of her nose.

The bureau is empty as I wander the corridors, vaguely searching for a bathroom or a kitchen but not really desperate for either. I encounter few souls, each just as lost as I am with blank eyes and uneasy walks as they stumble around in the dark. Despite my best intentions, I end up exactly where we started- back in the CCTV control room.

I flick the light on as I enter, walking over to the glowing control panel on the far side of the room. A book of maps is open on the top of the panel, flicked to a page that shows green land and veins of red winding roads. A city is marked on the page- Chicago. It flickers in my mind with a hint of recognition, but it's just a name. My eyes are drawn to something else- a red circle drawn onto the paper in permanent marker. The word 'BUREAU' is scrawled next to it in black ink- the answer to my question before I'd even asked it.

The pages of the book crackle as I flick through them, picking out the red circles and the closest cities as questions hatch in my mind. What were they doing here? I let the book slam closed on the top of the console, but the weight presses down on one of the buttons and the opposite wall of screens flickers to life.

My hands shake as I approach the wall, my eyes feasting hungrily on the screens. Many show empty streets and houses, some with dead bodies or brain-dead memory-wiped zombies wandering among the rubble. This must be the city, I realise. Chicago.

I'm about to turn away, to leave and continue my walk- but my eyes catch sight of a big screen right in the middle of the wall. The image is grainy, but it's clear enough to see what's on it. The grey floor is soaked with a wash of scarlet blood, two bodies lying still in the middle of a circle of benches.

I move back to the console, finding the camera controls and zooming in on the pale faces. My heart stops as I focus on them- first the man and then the woman. Memories that even a serum could not erase. Evelyn and Marcus- my parents.

Why are they dead? I want to scream. The grief claws at my throat, pulling at my skin and my hair as I stare at the screen through burning eyes. "What did you do to deserve this?" I whisper, walking forwards and putting my finger over the tiny red hole in my mother's head. It's not enough to hide the evidence I see before me- the blood-stained floor and the red streaks running down her face.

Horrified, I back from the room and run back towards the Atrium, sprinting back into the dorm. Tris is still asleep, her troubled face lined with creases of worry. Do I wake her, confront her? Why has she kept this from me? My legs move towards the bed, but my knees collapse before I make it that far.

They hit the carpet, and I curl into a ball on the floor. I beg the tears to come to relieve my burning eyes, but instead anger bubbles inside me like acid. _Why?_


	21. Chapter 21

TRIS

Tobias shakes my shoulder, nudging me awake. I look up into tear-stained eyes, staring into his grief-lined face. "What's wrong?" The bed bounces as I jolt upright, my hair sticking up in awkward directions as I rub the sleep from my eyes.

"You lied to me." His eyes are narrow, betrayal etched in his composure as he looks away, staring up at the plain walls. "Well, not so much lied as hiding the truth from me." I'm shocked he doesn't get whiplash as he turns to face me again, the duvet crumpled in his fingers.

"Tobias?"

"My parents, Tris." He sighs, wiping a tear off his cheek with the palm of his hand and turning to face me. "They're dead. Why are they dead?"

My heart aches as I shuffle forwards, grabbing his hands and placing them in my lap. "They were bad people, Tobias. They killed… so many."

"And that makes it okay to kill them, too?" He wails, pulling his hands from my grasp and rolling off the end of the bed. He stands up straight, his head bowed. His voice is a whisper, forced from his lungs as he turns once more to face me. "What gives _anyone_ the right to take away another human life?"

"They hurt you, Tobias." I get out of the bed, standing in front of him and grabbing his arms. The white scars from his father's beatings stand out like glowing beacons on his skin, and I lift his arm to the light so that he can see. "Marcus and Evelyn- they both hurt you. Some of the scars you can see, but most of them were on the inside."

I feel my eyes burn as I turn away, and feel the weight of his hand on my shoulder as he turns me back to face him. "Prove it to me. Prove they were bad people."

But I don't know how. "I don't… Tobias…" He looks at me like a lost puppy, and I collapse back onto the bed in defeat. "I don't want to spoil you. You've retained your innocence… I don't want to pollute your mind with the things I remember."

"Maybe I let myself forget in the hope that you'd help me bring the memories back." His body is warm when he sits next to me, resting his knees on his legs. "Please Tris. Show me."

I get an idea, but it's impossible. The weapons room is heavily protected, the serums lab destroyed. The only option would be to go back to the city, to use the Dauntless compound and go back through his fear landscape. Would the computers even work, after all the destruction in the city?

"I'll try." I decide, squeezing his hand as I stare at our knees. "How much do you want to know?"

"Everything I've forgotten. Even the bad stuff, even if it takes forever."

"Tobias," I smile sadly, turning my body slightly as I raise my hand and use it to cup his jaw. He turns his face towards me, his eyes glistening with sadness and hope. "You only forgot the bad things."

"Tell me." He insists, his jaw moving beneath my palm as he forces his mouth into a smile.

"I'm scared that you'll stop loving me if you're reminded of all the awful things I've done." I whisper, letting my hand fall and my gaze drift to his chest. He tucks his hand under my chin and forces me to look at him, moving his face towards mine.

His breath tickles my nose as he leans into me, his mouth caressing my cheek and then my lips. "I will never stop loving you." He gasps, kissing me again and again.

"Okay." I whimper, kissing him back as his hands drift over my shoulders, around my back and down until they find a place to rest on my ribs. It's wrong, that I let him do this in return for the knowledge he so desperately seeks, but I can't bring myself to push him away. "I'll find a way. I'll help you remember."

He smiles as he nuzzles his face into my neck, wrapping his arms around my back and squeezing me tight. "Thank you." His voice tickles my skin, his hair rubbing my chin as I rest my face atop his head.

TOBIAS

"We're going back to the city." Tris says. She holds a mug of hot tea in one hand, a stack of papers in the other. "I looked through all the records, and I can't find anything to get into the weapons lab. The only way to extinguish the effects of the memory serum is to use another serum. There isn't a serum that will restore your memories, but there are some that can kick-start the remembering process." She places the mug into my hands, and the heat immediately leeches into my cold skin.

The bed creaks as she shuffles onto the mattress, folding her legs and spreading the sheets around her in a semi-circle. "How?" I ask, taking a sip of the tea. It's sweet and black, just how I like it.

"The memory serum works so that it only eliminates certain memories, which are pre-configured by a computer. In theory, it would be possible to reverse the effects of the memory serum by reversing the serum itself, using the computer to send the memories via the serum back into your mind." I nod, trusting that Tris understands what she's saying more than I do. "Alternatively, we can use the fear serum to awaken that part of your brain, which is mostly unaffected by this particular memory serum. The problem with that of course is that your fears are often built on bad experiences, which _have_ been 'put away'." I nod again, and she sighs. "It's really complicated stuff. I just wish Matthew was here to explain it all."

"Matthew?" Tobias asks, his eyes outlined by confusion.

"He was in the city. He used to work here, in the Bureau. His lab is where we got the serum that protected my memories. He… he killed your father." I look down, grief prickling my heart. The wave rises inside me until I manage to push it away, breathing deeply against my burning eyes. "I think that if we manage to obtain some fear serum and hook you up to the computer, we can create a simulation that reawakens the 'bad' part of your brain. It's not without problems, of course…"

"Let's do it." I say. I don't _care_ about the repercussions. I just want to know.

Tris shakes her head. "I don't want to put you through that, Tobias. I've been through your fear landscape. Back in the city, when I first met you- your name was Four. Because you only had four fears. I don't know how that's changed, if this would even work… and we can't obtain the fear serum from here. It's tantalisingly close, but it's guarded by death serum and a whole load of other security measures. The easiest way to get it will be to go back to the city… and I really, really don't want to go back there."

Her voice shakes as she speaks, and I reach out to cup her face in her hand. "I'll believe you then. I'll believe what you say." I whisper, feeling her breath brush across my skin as I bring my face close to hers. The pale freckles on her nose stand out in the artificial light, the tiny imperfections that make her who she is.

"No. You have to know everything and there's things I can't- don't want to- tell you. If we can break the bond that's repressing those bad memories and make them come back… you might hate me. You probably will hate me, but it's a risk we'll have to take. Your parents… they died for a reason, but you need to see it for myself. You need to get your memories back. How we are now…" She looks into my face, her eyes wide with sadness. "It's not the same. You're not the Tobias I used to know. Together, we need the experience we gained from going through these things together, and bad as they are I need you to relive them. I just need you to understand, you know?"

I nod, kissing her cheek gently and pushing the hot mug into her hands. "Drink this. I'll go look at the maps, see if I can find a quick way to get us both to the city and back. And if it's really as bad as you make it out to be, we'll leave. We'll come up with a new plan, find somewhere new to live. We'll blend in, merge with society and be _human_ again."

She smiles, taking a sip of the warm amber liquid. "I'd like that." She murmurs, but I can see in her eyes how much the past has affected her, how badly she wants to leave it behind.

I turn to leave, pulling open the door of the dorm and stepping out into the corridor. At the last moment I swing back to her, poking my head through the gap of the closing door and smiling sweetly at her troubled form. "We'll do it. I promise."


	22. Chapter 22

TRIS

I spend most of the day rifling through the books in Matthew's lab. Of course, I had to face the fear landscape in the room with the glowing tiles, but the lack of humming and buzzing tells me it's been deactivated. Shame, because otherwise we could have used it to try and bring Tobias' memories back. Inside the trashed lab, I come across a number of books on serum theory, all addressing different points and methods, all mentioning different breeds of memory serum and methods of reversal, and its not easy stuff to understand. I take them back to the dorm and spread them on the beds, flipping through the important pages with one of Matthew's highlighters. It takes ages, and I finally come to a conclusion I had held all along.

We have to go back to the city. We have to use the dauntless fear landscape and manipulate the computer to show my memories. Then we have to go through them- both of us- and because I'm Divergent I can manage the landscape, flipping through the memories like a remote control on the TV. The problems being that we'd be going back into the city without weapons, into a world that's probably once more riddled with chaos, still littered with dead and rotting bodies.

I close all the books and lie back on the bed, my eyes lazily trailing over the ceiling as I wait for Tobias to return. He'd gone on his own little mission, trekking around the bureau searching for more answers- and some food. We'd managed to scrape some tinned rice pudding for dinner, heated up on one of the stoves in the group kitchens- but the idea of lunch was a far off dream. He also went in search of a car or a truck to get back to the city, something with fuel or at least not completely destroyed.

Something that stresses me as I lie here alone is the thought of everybody else. We took less than half of the bureau staff with us to the city, and Christina only took five people to the fringe in an old and battered van. There must be at least 50 more souls, lost and wondering in this apparently abandoned building- but I've barely seen more than 7 since we got here. Where are the others?

The door creaks open with Tobias' return and he crawls onto the bed next to me, pushing a shrivelled tangerine into my hand. "This is all I could find." He whispers, planting a soft kiss on my cheek. "Did you get an answer?"

"How much do you know about computers?"

He thinks for a while, then inclines his head and shapes his lips into a pout. "A fair bit, I think."

"Well, there's no easy way to do any of this. We have to go back to the city. There's this room in one of the buildings- I know where it is- that forms a fear landscape. You use a serum to connect to the computer which monitors your heart rate, and you face fear after fear. It moves onto the next one when you manage to calm down."

He sits up and looks down at me, his brow furrowed. "How does that help us?"

"Look… you'll have to reprogram the computer, all right? Once we've done that, we'll inject ourselves with the fear serum. The computer will be connected to the transmitter in my serum, but instead of showing fears it will show my memories."

"But if they're not fears, and a slow heart rate moves it on…"

"We have to disable that feature." I sit up, running my hand through my hair and crossing my legs. "I'm… special. It's such a long story, another thing that you'll have to believe. When I'm in a simulation, I'm _aware_ that I'm in one. You are too I guess, but not in the same way. Back in the city, we had a name for people like me, like us. We're Divergent."

"Which means…?" His blank look tells me all I need to know. He really doesn't remember.

"It means we can control the simulation. When we've had enough of one memory, I can force it to move on… I've been reading through these books- there's no way to control what memories we see, but we can program the computer to show memories of a certain theme or from a certain era. If we set it to show the stuff that's happened over the past year or so- everything should be covered."

He nods, his eyes clouding over with thought as he considers my plan. "When do we leave?"

TOBIAS

We clamber into a battered old car in one of the garages. Rust flakes off the sides, fuel dripping down the metal where I siphoned it from one of the other vehicles. Tris sits in the passenger seat while my feet find the pedals, my hands working under the dash to connect the cut wires and start the engine. "Where did you learn to do that?" Tris asks, reaching behind her and throwing the pile of books into the back seat.

"You think you're the only one who can read?" I laugh, the engine finally roaring to life by my touch.

The car bumps over the crumbled road back to the city as we race away from the setting sun. The smell of orange fills the air, mixing with the scent of burning petrol as Tris peels her tangerine. She pops a shrivelled segment into my mouth as I drive, and the tough skin bursts against my jittering teeth. The cool, sweet syrup floods through my mouth, trickling down my throat as I swallow the stringy flesh.

As the sun brushes the edge of the horizon, we catch the glint of light against distant glass windows. "The city?" I ask, watching from the corner of my eye as Tris nods next to me. I press my foot to the floor as we pass a collection of crumbling slums. The headlights catch the glowing, wide eyes of the dirty-faced fringers as we zoom along, gravel flying out from beneath our spinning wheels and scattering across the cracked tarmac.

It's almost completely dark by the time we drive through a pair of open gates. Gradually, the crumbled tarmac turns to dirt, and we move alongside rusting train tracks as we speed towards the city, clouds of dust billowing in our wake. I dim the headlights as the first building looms on our right, and I feel the soft brush of Tris' fingers against my arm as I draw to a stop. "We have to get to the Spire." She whispers, her breath escaping her mouth in thin wisps of steam. Goosebumps rise on my forearms, my hair prickling on end as a shadow moves across the tracks.

My voice is strangely loud when I speak, breaking the eerie silence of the cold air. "Which way?"

"We'll have to go on foot." Her eyes flicker to outside, where figures shift in the shadows of the buildings. "Follow the tracks."

I nod, cracking open the door of the car and stepping out onto more cracked tarmac. The side of the road crumbles into the dirt at the edge of the tracks as I close the door behind me, opening the back to grab Tris' books. She joins me, and soon the small pile is divided between our arms. Our feet squeak over the metal as we walk along the tracks, stepping over the dirty gravel and treading carefully on the rotting wooden planks between the rails.

A gust of wind blows behind our backs, forcing us forwards through the city as it bites through our clothes. The gravel and planks of slippery wood give way to metal grills and long, thin rods as the tracks rise above the city, the pages of the books flying open in the breeze. The moon peaks from behind grey clouds as we trek across the city, the stars poking through the black blanket of the sky as our metallic footsteps echo through half-deserted streets.

Tris finally nudges me with a bony shoulder, tilting her head across a wide, black gap. It leads down to the darkened streets below, the rough top of the opposite building shining in the moonlight. "We can take the back entrance, if you like."

"How far is it to the Spire?" I ask, leaning over the edge of the tracks to peer through the gap. My heart constricts in my chest, my lungs refusing to work as I stare at the black hole below our feet.

"I don't know. I've never walked there on the tracks, only in the tunnels." She shrugs, her toes finding the edge of the tracks. "Do you reckon you can jump this?"

My throat dries, my lungs feeling choked with sand as I turn to face her. Her skin shines white in the moonlight, her wide eyes reflecting the stars. I nod, and the throws her books across the gap. They hit the roof, skidding across the grey gravel with loud ripping sounds as I follow her lead. Then she takes my hand, stepping back almost to the other side of the track.

She puts one foot forwards, bouncing on her knees as she counts down under her breath. "One… Two…"

We run on three, jumping through the bitter air and landing with a rough jolt on the top of the roof. Something flickers in the back of my mind like a hint of recognition, a glimpse of a distant memory. "Tris." I gasp as I straighten up, a fallen book in my fingers. "I've done that before, haven't I?"

She smiles, picking up another book and tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "Back before all this, our city held factions. The Abnegation were selfless and the Candor were honest, while the Erudite were smart. The Amity were peaceful, and then there was Dauntless."

"Courage." I whisper, the knowledge already flooding into my mind with an icy chill. "Bravery."

Tris smiles, her head falling against my chest with a grin. "You remember."

"Only bits." The books make my fingers ache as I hold them in one hand, brushing her cheeks with the other. "How do we get in?"

She walks to the edge of the building, looking down into a deep and dark hole. The wind whips around her, making her loose clothes stick to her spine. I step up behind her, the pages of the books in my hands fluttering as I peer down the hole. "Are you afraid of heights?" She asks, an eyebrow raised.

I shake my head, my knees trembling as I gaze down into the bottomless hole. "Petrified."


	23. Chapter 23

TRIS

"We believe that cowardice is to blame for the world's injustices. We believe that peace is hard-won, that sometimes it is necessary to fight for peace. We believe in justice and freedom, in acknowledging fear. We believe in ordinary acts of bravery and standing up for one another, in shouting for those who can only whisper, in defending those who cannot defend themselves. We agree that life is not comfortable, is not easy, that good manners and silence do nothing to help. We believe in going down fighting, and in ourselves." My words are carried away on the wind as I shift my books to one hand, reaching out and taking hold of Tobias' cold fingers with the other. "Ready."

"As I'll ever be." He gulps, squeezing my hand.

I step forwards, clutching the books to my chest as I'm swallowed by the darkness. All I feel is the wind whipping at my clothes and my hair as we plummet down the black hole, Tobias' shaking hand in mine. We hit the bottom, the damp net curling around our bodies as the grey clouds above drift over the white moon. I roll onto my knees, half expecting hands to crawl at my legs through the net as I wrench the other books from Tobias' arms.

"You okay?" I ask, brushing my fingers over his cheek. His skin is pale, his eyes squeezed closed.

"Am I dead?" He whispers, his hands shaking at his sides. I smile as I swoop down, my hair tickling the sides of his face as I plant a soft kiss on his clenched mouth. His lips loosen, his eyes slowly opening to stare up at the clouding sky above us. "I take that as a no."

A raindrop splashes on my scalp and dribbles down my head, quickly followed by thousands of others that soak through my clothes and splash into puddles beneath the net. "Come on." I tuck the books under my arm and clamber across the slippery net until I reach the wooden platform on the other side. Tobias follows, his black hair dripping rainwater over his face as he sits on the edge of the next, his chest rising and falling with each heavy breath.

We walk together through the dark tunnels, my free hand trailing along the damp walls as Tobias takes half the books from under my arm. "Where are we?"

I smile as a faint blue light materialises at the end of the corridor, a dim glow that spurs me on through the darkness. "Home."

The pit shines with the light from the Spire above, shimmering moonlight glinting through the glass ceiling and casting dim patterns on the dark ground below. I look up gingerly, half expecting a shower of corpses to come raining down from the rainbow floor above.

"Which way?" Tobias asks, his eyes filled with awe as he casts them around the cavern. He examines the paths that run up the walls, finding the hundreds of caves and paths that lead above our heads and to other winding tunnels across the compound.

"Up."

I wink and start towards the closest path, walking close to the wall as we take baby steps up the slippery stone. Cool gusts of air blow through the caves, dim lights shining from inside rooms and stores as we shift past the doorways. Shadows flicker inside some of the rooms, people shuffling back and to past open doors.

The ghosts of my past haunt me as I climb, the backs of my legs aching with effort as I ascend the slippery paths. We pass the tattoo parlour, my skin tingling at the thought of Tori's needle running over my collarbone, at the memory of her death. I blink away tears, looking away from Tobias as we climb further, my arms aching from the weight of the books while my heart aches with memories of my friends: of Christina and Will, of Cara and even Peter.

We finally reach the entrance to the Spire and I step onto the paint-splattered floor, feeling my shoes stick to the glass as I pad across to the control room on the far side of the circular room. We step through the open door, inhaling the strong smell of urine mixed with something worse as we step across to the battered panel.

Tobias sets to work, first booting up and then typing on the sticky keys until green lettering appears on the black screens. I read out Matthew's scrawled notes as he types the code into the computer, entering different commands. He highlights parts of the code, deleting them and replacing them as we go. It takes a whole hour before we finish, the green writing completely reconfigured. I read over Tobias' head, swinging open one of the battered cupboards and withdrawing from it two identical black boxes.

We inject ourselves with the serum, and I feel the cool liquid pulsing through my veins as we leave the books behind, stepping through the room and into the fear landscape.

The room is foggy at first, clouded with mist that obscures our view of the graffiti on the walls. Tobias grips my hand as the mist clears, the room morphing into the rounded meeting room of the Hub. We watch from the top of the stairs as Caleb steps from the crowd of grey-clothed citizens and takes the knife from Marcus. He slices into his palm and drips his blood into the pink-stained water of the Erudite bowl, then joins the rows of blue-wearing girls and boys across the room. It's me next- and I watch as I step away from the bench and enter the circle.

Tobias' hand squeezes mine as the other me slices into her hand, hovering between the Abnegation and Dauntless bowls with an uncertainty I remember all too well. She closes her eyes, letting the blood pool in her hand before she opens her fingers, letting the red drop hiss onto the burning coals.

The mist surrounds us again, seeping into my lungs with a cold ferocity as it clears to show the training room. We stand in a line down the length of the room, punching hopelessly against swinging bags that hang from the low ceiling. Tobias trails back and forth down the long row, his eyes running lazily over my stance before he approaches, pressing his hand against my stomach to straighten my back. "You're skinny. Use your elbows and your knees." He breathes into my ear, removing his hand as he continues down the row.

I feel Tobias blush at my side as the memory moves on, flicking to my first real fight. His hands shake, but for a different reason as I'm beaten to a pulp. I fall to the floor, my arms flailing hopelessly and my eyes drifting closed as Christina steps into the circle to pick me up. The room shifts again, and I'm standing straight-backed against the target as Tobias throws the three knives at my head. "I knew then." He whispers at my side, his chin resting on my shoulder. "That you were brave, and cute, and strong."

A hot blush rises in my cheeks, burning at my skin as the memory flicks onwards. Tobias presses against my side as we find ourselves in the darkness, twisted voices shouting in our ears. "Stiff! Stiff!" They shout, as hands grope at our skin and pull at our clothes.

"What's going on?" I shout above the screams, suffocating under the blackness as Tobias wraps his arms around me. "Why are we experiencing this? We only watched them the other times…"

I gasp as my back hits a cold railing, icy water splashing from the chasm and into my scalp. Tobias shrieks as we tilt back, and I sob into his shoulder as the railing presses into my spine.

"Tris!" He shouts, his hands finding my face. "You have to calm down!"

But I can't. I can't breathe, the weight of the hands pushing down on me as they try and force me over the railing. He holds me, resting his forehead against mine. "What happens next? What happens?"

"You save me!" I scream, taking huge gulps of air as a hand creeps beneath the blackness and runs over my skin. "But you're here!" My throat burns as I yell the words, squirming to get away from Peter's groping fingers. "Please!"

Suddenly I fall backwards; the bar vanished from beneath me. I expect to plummet down the chasm, to fall to a wet death on the slippery rocks below, but when I open my eyes I find myself on the Abnegation streets, Tobias's panting body lying on top of mine.

"What did you do?" I whisper as we stand, my eyes skimming over the landscape. "What happened?"

"I controlled the landscape, like you said. I concentrated really hard, and it moved on." I nod, choking back a sob as I take in the masses of black-clothed bodies crowded around us.

"Tobias?"

He sucks in a breath, his eyes darting from face to face. "I remember." His voice is a whisper as Will materialises in front of us, his gun pointing at my forehead.

TOBIAS

I fumble at my side, my eyes closed as I grip Tris' hand with all my might. She shakes as the metal of the gun touches her forehead, and I raise my own weapon. The bang of the bullet echoes in my mind as Will crumples to the ground, his eyes glassy and blank.

There's no time to talk as the landscape moves on, finding Evelyn in the factionless warehouse. Chills run down my spine as everything comes rushing back, everything she did. "Tris. I remember, I know what happens. We have to leave."

My voice shakes as I talk, but she is insensible. Her wide eyes dart back and forth with fear as Evelyn walks up to her, running one clawed finger down the line of her jaw. "This is my design, Beatrice. _Fear me_."

I stand to face her. This isn't a memory anymore, but it's not true either. My hand curls into a fist at my side, my fingers sticky with Will's blood as I punch her in the jaw. She flies backwards, vanishing as she hits the floor.

My father is next, standing above me with his belt raised. I punch him too, kicking him to the floor until he vanishes in a ball of fear. We move through scenes that flicker through my brain, memories fresh and flickering and vivid like fire until we reach modern day. The mist reappears, and vanishes to leave the paint-scrawled brick-walled room behind.

I bend down, gently shaking Tris. She's curled on the floor, her head tucked beneath her trembling arms as she takes deep, heaving breaths. "Tris. It's okay, it's okay. Come on." She's still shaking, tears dripping down her pale skin as I ease her to her feet. She wraps her arms around me, gripping my shoulders as she sobs into my neck. "Hey, it's okay. It's over. What's wrong?"

She wipes her eyes, her nose and cheeks red from crying. "Will… Christina… Matthew… Cara… everything."

I cradle her head in my hand, swaying back and forth. "It's done. None of it matters, okay. They're gone, there's nothing we can do." She sniffs, closing her eyes against my chest. Another tear drips from beneath her eyelashes, landing on my t-shirt with a salty splash.

Finally she quietens. The sobs stop and more tears refuse to fall, and her curled fists unwind as she lifts her head. Her lips are salty as I brush my mouth against hers, feeling her soft skin against mine. "Did it work?" She whispers, bringing her hand up to run it through my hair. It's dry again, which makes me wonder how long we've been in here, fighting off her memories.

"It worked. I remember it all- everything. From the first moment I laid eyes on you, till the moment I left you to complete that mission and beyond. I remember everything that went right and everything that went wrong, all the good things and all the bad things. But most of all I remember you. When I think of you, of us, my mind is so clear. It's like a swimming pool with the clearest water ever, and I can see right the way to the bottom."

She nods with a huge grin, and smashes her face into my chest as she wraps me in a huge hug once more. "I love you, Tobias Eaton."

"I love you too, Tris, and I've never, ever doubted that; but seeing you go through all your memories, seeing the things you've been through, the stuff you've survived. It just made me love you even more."


	24. Epilogue

EPILOGUE

TRIS

It takes a while, but eventually we manage to rebuild the city out of the ashes. It rises like a glorious phoenix, shining with silvery glass in the orange sun. Two winters pass; months of pure white snow piling up against the sides of buildings and icing the roads. The cold weather pauses the rebuilding of the city, but in the summer months the skyscrapers grow like young trees, blooming into the sky.

We all work together. Without Evelyn or Marcus or Jeanine to hold back our progress; without the factions that for so long kept us divided- we are united. We wake, we work, we play, and we sleep. Life goes on in an endless circle, but somehow it never gets boring. Together, Tobias and I moved back into Dauntless HQ- though the only part of its former identity the area still claims is the name- The Pit. This area alone was left out of the plans, still standing exactly how we left it two years ago.

The glass ceiling to the pit is still adorned with the rainbow splatters of our paintball guns- the only change being the addition of clear glass tiles over the floor above to keep it intact. The fear landscape exists too- but Tobias and I hold the only keys. This is where we sit now, on a checked blanket in the middle of a cold stone floor. His lips curl into a smile as he looks at me through a veil of black lashes, a pair of boxes in his outstretched hands. I take one, drawing a needle from it and pushing the thin metal tube into Tobias' neck as he does the same to me.

I gasp as the liquid enters my system, and close my eyes as I wait for the landscape to manifest itself around us. A soft, warm breeze sweeps across my face, catching my arm as I lower it to the ground. A bird tweets somewhere nearby, the stone ground beneath us morphing into a grassy meadow. I open my eyes, inhaling the earthy scents of the natural, unpolluted world as I lean close to Tobias, his arms wrapping loosely around my shoulders.

"It's wonderful." I whisper, not daring to disturb the perfect silence. Flowers flutter in the ankle-deep grass, lush and green against the bright blue sky. White clouds float above us, distant hills and mountains rolling on the horizon. Birds flutter out of reach, tiny yellow balls of feather flying in circles above our heads before dropping quickly to the floor, only to swoop up again with delicate flowers clasped in their talons.

One of the birds flies over us, and then another. As their wings brush my hair, their claws open and the flowers drop into my lap, a pile of delicate and brightly coloured petals building up against my dark clothing. Tobias reaches across me, extracting a tiny yellow flower from the pile. He holds it just under the blossom, tucking the leafy green stalk into my hair. He collects more of them in bright colours, red and blue and orange, tucking them into my hair like an elegant headband.

"What kind of flowers are these?" I whisper, picking up one of the tiny blooms from my lap. Its five yellow petals shine like the sun, spread in a round fan and dotted with dewy drops of cool water.

"Primroses." He answers, his voice a warm whisper in my ear as he plucks the flower from my hands. "They stand for young love. It means that I can't live without you." I feel a blush rising in my cheek as the flowers settle in my hair, and I lie back into his lap with my hands linked over my stomach.

"How did you know that?"

"I know a lot of things, Tris." He leans down, kissing me on the nose before shuffling out from beneath my head and joining me, his feet trailing into the grass as he links his fingers with mine.

"Where are we? I've never even imagined a place as beautiful as this before."

"I was reading, in the _Erudite_ library." He answers, running his thumb along the back of my hand. "I found a really old book- fiction I think. It was about a girl who ended up in this horrible world that she didn't know anything about, full of strange people that she didn't understand. She had a path that she had to follow, and people to follow it with, until they reached this beautiful city where they were to find a wizard who could help her to get home."

"Did she ever make it?" My voice is a wondrous whisper as the clouds above us morph in the soft breeze, catching the sun in a million different ways.

"Oh yes, but that's not my point. To get to the city, she had to follow this yellow bricked road. On her way she walked through this deep and dark forest, full of horrors she had to try and defeat- and it reminded me of you- of us. How we've come along this journey together, stared death in the eye and made the ultimate sacrifices to save one another."

"So why the flowers? Why the grass, and the birds, and the mountains?" The earthy air fills my lungs with warmth and comfort as I inhale, the soft grass pressing into my back.

"Well this girl is called Dorothy, and she has her friends; the lion, and the tin man- and Toto, her dog. They get out of the dangerous woods, and emerge in this field full of beautiful flowers- poppies, I believe. Only, the poppies sent the travellers to sleep and they had to be saved by this fairy queen kind of deal. That half isn't important- what I _mean_… it's like a break, you know? All the hard stuff is over, we've made it through the woods. Now we get to rest in a beautiful meadow, just the two of us- before we enter the great Emerald City and all our wishes come true."

"And what would you wish for?" I roll, blocking his view of the sky as I lean over him, my hair dangling into his face. One of the flowers falls out, floating to the floor next to his head as I duck down to plant a soft kiss on his parted lips.

"Well, the Lion wished for courage, and the Tin Man wished for a heart. Like both of those guys, I already have everything I could ever wish for."

"Oh." I murmur, sitting back on my heels and tucking a strand of hair behind my ear, suddenly awkward. He snaps upright, shaking his head as he cups my cheek with his hand.

"No, you don't understand. Joining Dauntless gave me courage. Meeting you gave me a heart. Home is where I have all of those things- all of these." He points to his back, and then takes my hands in both of his. "I love you Tris. I wouldn't wish for anything else, because I have everything I could ever want. I have you."

I smile, kissing him again as the birds tweet overhead. "I know." My voice is quiet, sadness tweaking at the edges as I squeeze his fingers in what I hope is a reassuring manner.

"Why," he asks. "What would you wish for?"

Thoughts of the old days flicker through my mind. My parents first, the photographs folded in Tobias' old quarters downstairs in The Pit. Then Caleb comes along, his pale smiling face pushing itself to the fore of my mind. Christina pushes him aside, arms linked with Matthew and Cara and Will. We never did find them- Matthew and Christina, even after all this time…

But none of it matters. I look up, taking in the brightness of the sky, the perfect green of the grass as the serum burns itself out. The spongy ground below our bottoms hardens back to concrete, the beautiful meadow vanishing back into the old brick-walled room. The bright sun is replaced by harsh electric lights, and Tobias' smooth skin shines in the white glow.

"Well Toto, it appears all my wishes have just come true?"

"Why do I have to be Toto?" Tobias sulks, cocking his head to one side for a second while he considers me. "What do you mean?"

"I wished I could go home."

"But _why_?" He insists, pushing playfully on my knees.

"I can't spend my life wandering through Oz with you, Tobias. I want it- I _need_ it to be real! Can't you see?"

He smiles, kissing me gently on the cheek as he finally understands. "There's no place like home, Tris."


End file.
